On Tuesday, The Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro raised eyebrows by sharing his opinion that retirement shouldn’t be an option for 65-year-olds in America. That opinion was not well received, and the radio host is doubling down on his position.
On The Ben Shapiro Show, the conservative host railed against social security, calling it an unsustainable Ponzi scheme.
“Let’s be real about this: it’s insane that we haven’t raised the retirement age in the United States,” said Shapiro. “It’s totally crazy…No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem. Everybody that I know who is elderly that retires is dead within five years.
“If you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, things go to hell in a handbasket real quick,” he concluded.
Shapiro was sharply criticized for his stance, with many on social media using humor to poke fun at the opinion.
However, on Wednesday, Shapiro refused to backtrack from his stance.
“Yesterday, I apparently broke the internet with the hot and spicy subject of….Social Security and retirement,” Ben Shapiro wrote on X.
“It’s a free country – if you have the money to retire and you want to, that’s your choice. But work is a large part of a fulfilling and purposeful life, and retirement as we know it today—sending the elderly out to pasture to wither away—is not how we were created to live,” he continued.
Shapiro lampooned the idea that work doesn’t provide fulfillment and purpose, arguing against the idea that he said it “shared by both the left and the right.”
I’m sure people that have actually labored their whole lives to retire appreciate someone paid to talk and alarm people for a living lecturing them. Shapiro is fortunate there’s an industry and audience for his grift and hyperbole, and could at least respect his elders. The man expels hot air and rage porn for a living and does very well for himself because gullible people buy into it.Not exactly producing much of value there.