People may be dying earlier in recent years, but one ancillary benefit of that is it lessens the burden on entitlements for senior citizens.
That's the take of presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who told a crowd in New Hampshire that shorter lifespans will give Social Security a longer runway without raising eligibility ages.
"What I don't think people are acknowledging the way they should is that life expectancy in this country is declining. And so, you know, we used to think it was just gonna keep going up. I mean, it's been a pretty steep decline. So I don't see how you raise it if life expectancy is declining," DeSantis said in Windham.
DeSantis said that the decrease in lifespans isn't "just from COVID," but is "from a lot of other things," including "deaths of despair, overdoses" and "other things, that have happened that I think the government hasn't been willing to really be honest about."
Domestic life expectancy is just over 76 years on average, which was where it was in the last decade of the 20th century.
The Governor's remarks Friday continue a theme of recent vintage in which he has noted people are dying at younger ages than they did years back, so Social Security should remain untouched.
"It should reflect life expectancy and what we've had in this country is a pretty significant decline in life expectancy. And so given those circumstances to raise (qualifying ages), it would be cutting against where the demographics are going. So that's not going to happen," the Governor said in Iowa back in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment