I'm 32. I fully expect to work to the age of 80 and live past 100. I'm making my plans accordingly.

Easily fixed: just have the high schools start handing out cigarettes.

And thus is the problem of low birthrates solved. American ingenuity at work. If we can't increase our population at the beginning of the spectrum, we'll just do it at the end.

BC, you'll have to add another five years to your work life.

erp: I'm not sure how this solves the problem. First, where are the politicians going to get the will to take the highly unpopular step of radically increasing the retirement age.

Second, that still only puts the problem off a few years.

David, I simply must get my sarcasm alert mechanism repaired.

Of course, asking people to work until they're 85 won't solve the problem, but I'm quite confident that it will be solved in ways that might not be apparent right now.

Young BC plans to work until he/she's 80. I hope he/she has a Plan B because a lot of things will change for him/her in the next 48 years.

All wishful self-delusion.

Not everyone works at a desk or a terminal. Tell somone who works in construction, transportation or distribution that he is going to keep working to age 85.

Does anybody know anything about workers' compensation practice?

Is that what it will come to--the literate chained to desks to maintain those of weak mind whose once-strong backs failed at age 65 or earlier? That is exactly what the result would be if retirement age were other than uniform for all occupations.

No. The answer is to privatize retirement funding. Of course we shall maintain compulsory paricipation, as now. Let people make rational decisions as to when they want to go out, based on individual economic and personal circumstances.

Those who wish to continue working, say, past age 65, should be able to retire, collect their annuity, ceasing to make contributions thereto, and continue to perform such work as may please them and which the market might allow.

What with our 401k's and IRA's and RothIRA's, my wife & I can retire whenever we choose to. In the coming years, more and more people will have this option themselves.

As I read somewhere:
401(k) to live on,
company pension for trips to Europe or Bahamas,
and
Social Security for lap dances.

The age of retirement should be raised to 85 by 2050 because [...] anti-ageing advances could raise life expectancy by a year each year over the next two decades.

Alarmist nonsense, if one is an American.

Since this appeared in the BBC, we can say that it's quite true that Europeans should take it seriously.

However, in the U.S., the timing of the prediction is way off.
Our pressing problem is financing the retirement of the Boomers over the next twenty-five years, so we should immediately raise the retirement age further and faster than it already has been, perhaps to age 66 for those born in 1950 - 1951, and sliding up to age 70 for those born '52 - '61.

But by 2050, the crisis is over.
Even if we assume that the average American born in 2030 will live to be 100, (and there is a very good chance that such will be so), that won't mean that the average Boomer, X, or Millenial will live to be 100.

If we guess that the average Boomer alive now will make 85, that still means that by 2050 more than 90% of the Boomers will have gone to their final reward.

In the meantime, by 2050 the U.S. economy should measure, (in constant 2005 dollars), between $ 40 trillion and $ 75 trillion, depending on many factors that I'd be very happy to discuss at great length, should anyone desire me to do so.
The highlights include rate of population growth, rate of productivity growth, increase in general health, and historical example.

In any case, it's extremely likely that by 2050 the average American will be TWICE as wealthy as she is today, (measured by purchasing power parity), somewhat likely that she'll be thrice as wealthy, and it's reasonably possible that she'll quadruple her well-being.*

Rather than being forced to raise the age of retirement, by 2050 more people will be retiring at younger ages than they do now, for reasons touched on by Lou Gots and ray.

*As always, barring an Earth-strike by a large meteorite, the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, or global thermonuclear war. Widespread bio-warfare or a natural outbreak of a killer virus will push prosperity down towards the lower end of the projection, but won't end its growth.

Hmm, that comment is pro-American. You're not really Noam Chomsky, are you?

I had an epiphany the other day...
If it can be called that.

Actually, I fell down the stairs and hit my head, and when I came to, I saw clearly that I should be using my powers for good, to somehow make up for all of the mind-fouling blather that I've published and spoke of over the many long years.