I'm a bit late seeing this, but a couple of days ago, Atrios pointed out something that I haven't heard from the MSM monkeys or invertebrate Dems:

...to be clear, long life is a good thing, but what's not good is the uncertainty about time of death. From a financial planning perspective, given nest egg at retirement of x and expected years until death y you'd like to spend x/y annually and have exactly 0 dollars at the moment of death (assuming away any bequest desires). But, since you don't know when you're going to die exactly, absent an annuity you face the prospect of dying with extra money in the bank, "wasting" it, or living longer than expected and being flat broke.

Yeah, in other words, if you live a long life, how valuable is that private security plan going to be? Social Security pays you every month until you die. That savings account, though, could run out if you have the (mis)fortune of living a long long time.

[Whence: slacktivist, who is new to the blogroll as of today, via Xeni Cory Doctorow [oops! wrong boing]....who is one piece of a links-missing-from-the-blogroll puzzle. What happened to Eschaton? The link was there once. What happened to Boing Boing? :? There's another one I've been trying to find, a funny blog whose name escapes me. Did I delete them without realizing it? Have I gone mad? I knew I shouldn't've had that hamburger at the July 4th picnic last year!]

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