Saletan makes an obvious, unsettling point:
As the latest Reuters report notes, over the last four decades, U.S. life expectancy has climbed from 70.8 to 77.8 years. By 2015, it's on track to hit 79.2 years. Meanwhile, unlike other industrialized democracies, the United States has replaced pensions with 401(k) plans. So your retirement-income pie can suddenly shrink—as, for example, it's doing right now—and, at the same time, the longevity you've gained from all this lovely industrialization requires you to carve that pie into more and more annual pieces.