either collect more taxes or pay less benefits.
That’s the only two ways, other than combining the two.
Ultimately two things will be done.
1) The cap on FICA taxes will be lifted and that tax will be paid on every penny of income.
2) A Tobin tax on Wall Street transactions will be imposed and that money put into SS.
Both will be wildly popular with most of the population.
Sorry to break that to you, guys.
The third way is also the solution, begin privatizing, allow individuals to invest their portion in a variety of diversified investments including a fixed account.
The easiest solution would be to push the retirement age from 67 to 70. Which makes sense given that when it started, life expectancy was only about 65 which was the retirement age. Medical advances have opened up a big gap that was only partially closed by raising the retirement age to 67. Also, lots of people are in much better health for longer than they used to be and a lot fewer jobs now involve backbreaking manual labor.
Invest in things outside just treasury securities so there are market returns instead of manipulated Fed returns...
Privatize accounts as Chile did decades ago - leading to a higher net worth of Chileans than Americans...
Get rid of scammers with "hurt backs"...
Stop paying benefits to illegal immigrants...
Um, no. There is an obvious way that does not involve either raising taxes or cutting benefits to balance SS. I don’t advocate for it, but it is the one political creatures always choose.
The National Debt went up $10 trillion under Obama. At some point, the cowards in Congress will just start putting the SS deficit on the National Debt. They are too cowardly to do either raising taxes or lower benefits. Of course, there will be some minor reduced benefits like some minor means testing or raising the ages to collect again. But that is just nibbling around the edges.
At the end of the day, they will just “balance” SS by housing the deficit on the National Debt, until our eventual financial collapse.
Third way.... offer citizens the opportunity to withdraw the funds that they paid in and were paid in for them over their work career.