If these trends are not altered, by government policy and by the choices American citizens make, then Social Security could actually generate actual “generational” warfare - at least in terms of public policy debates and actions. Why?
The current, and exponentially increasing, annual deficits (payroll tax contributions insufficient to pay current benefits) for Social Security CANNOT be corrected without a greatly expanded workforce that is actively employed; producing an expanding number of employed workers paying more (than is being paid today) into Social Security.
This report suggests that that may be impossible; at least in terms of job growth being sufficient for the “employed” base needed to rescue the Social Security program from itself.
In fact this report essentially forecasts a larger force of chronic unemployed and under-employed. They cannot help pay for Social Security and in fact make the problem worse by the drag on financial resources that they make on working taxpayers through the government programs established to help them.
Drastic measures are needed and no matter how correct and necessary those measures are, millions of people will be unhappy about them.
In 1950 there were 16 workers for every retiree; today it is about 3; and by 2030 it will be two. And by 2030, one out of every five residents of this country will be 65 or older, twice what it is today. We are being crushed by the welfare state. We can't afford it.
SS and Medicare are pay as you go programs. They are consuming a greater and greater portion of the US budget non-entitlement funding. 75% of the costs of Medicare Parts B and D are paid by the General Fund, by law. The premiums collected pay for only 25% of the costs. A greater expanded work force cannot cover those costs. Actuarily, it will not work.