Ultimately the system will will collapse.
The question is whether it will be a smoking crater, or a very hard landing.
We need a transition system that doesn't cheat the people who have paid their entire lives and planned their retirement around the certainty of getting back what they put in, while assuring the current payers that they will be getting back what they are currently putting in.
I'm not wise enough to solve the problem here, but perhaps the portion of your social security you pay that goes to a personal account vs to the current recipients varies with time? This year, status quo, next year, 2%/98%, the year after, 4%/96%, etc. By the time a 20 year old gets to retirement everything in his account is actually his (plus interest!).
And we need to keep a future JFK from raiding it!
“We need a transition system that doesn’t cheat the people who have paid their entire lives and planned their retirement around the certainty of getting back what they put in, while assuring the current payers that they will be getting back what they are currently putting in.”
There’s no way to do this without stealing money from current workers.
Like I said. There are two options - boomers take the hit now or the system collapses. A ‘middle ground’ that fully funds boomers while locking their kids out is what some pensions have done. It’s not fair, but it’s probably what will happen because it gives the Boomers what they want (money), at the expense of not boomers and best of all ‘fixes’ the problem.