Conservative Pundit Ben Shapiro Sparks Controversy After Calling Retirement ‘A Stupid Idea’

Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro‘s comments calling retirement “a stupid idea” have provoked controversy online.

“And let’s be real about this – it’s insane that we haven’t raised the retirement age in the United States,” Shapiro declared on The Daily Wire podcast. “It’s totally crazy. Joe Biden – if that were the case, Joe Biden should not be running for president. Ok? Joe Biden is 81 years old.”

“The retirement age in the United States, at which you start to receive Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare, is 65,” he said. “Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and Medicare for 16 years, and he wants to continue in office until he is 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible for retirement.

He declared that nobody “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,” Shapiro argued. “Everybody that I know who is – who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years.”

The conservative political commentator also stated that if someone talked to an elderly person “and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, things go to hell in a handbasket real quick.”

“But put all of that aside, just on a fiscal level and on a logical level, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt established 65 as the retirement age, the average life expectancy in the United States was 63 years old,” Shapiro recounted. “Today, the average life expectancy in the United States is close to 80.”

“It’s totally insane that you believe that you should be able to work from the time that you are essentially 20 to the time that you are 65 – which is a 45-year period – pay in, and then you’ll receive Social Security benefits sufficient to support you and your family, you and your wife or whatever, for, like, another 20 years,” he added.

“That’s crazy talk,” Shapiro argued. “That is not fiscally sustainable. The notion that if you have to raise the retirement age to 67 or 68, that everyone is gonna fall apart – my parents are that age. My parents are not retired, and they shouldn’t retire. It would be very bad for them to retire.”

“By the way, it’s disrespectful to people who are 67, 68, 69 years old to suggest that they are in the same shape as people who are 65 – were in 1940,” he then stated. “It’s not true at all. Have you met a 65-year-old lately? 65 year-olds are not old in the United States. They’re not. 68-year-olds are not old in the United States.”

“Again, Joe Biden thinks he’s not old, and that dude is running for president again, and that dude actually is old, and he’s 81,” Shapiro continued. “I fail to see how a country in which our entire leadership class is 80 plus is telling you that we should have a retirement age of 65. It makes no sense at all.”

The commentator’s criticism of the traditional retirement model caused many people on social media to accuse him of being unaware of the struggles with which working-class Americans are dealing.

“He’s a glorified influencer who does nothing more than sit behind a desk and talk to cameras to make a living,” one person said during a YouTube reaction video. “He has no right to lecture anyone on work.”

Others addressed the physical toll many professions endure over a lifetime.

“Shapiro would never make it doing a physical labor job where your body is broken down after years of hard work,” another person wrote. “For those of us who actually work for a living, retirement is something we dream of.”

“If you like making money, it makes sense to never retire, but most of us don’t really like what we do to make money and are only working so we no longer have to work,” another user posted. “We are just in it for the money so we can retire early.”

A recent Quinnipiac University national poll of adults showed that 78% of the respondents are against proposals to extend the full Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70. Opposition remained at 62% even when respondents were told that this increase could help benefits last longer.

In November 2023, Shapiro blasted coworker Candace Owens, a podcast host for The Daily Wire, for her comments about the Israel-Hamas War.

“No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever,” Owens said. “[I can’t] believe this even needs to be said or is even considered the least bit controversial to state.”

Shapiro wrote that “her behavior during this [period] has been disgraceful, without a doubt.”

When Owens quoted Matthew 5:9 in response, Shapiro clapped back, saying that if she feels “that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between” her and God, then she can “by all means quit.”