When Bush proposed looking at private accounts for social security a couple years ago, Democrats were against it, and many denied that Social Security has any funding problems. Nancy Pelosi has said that funding for S.S. is fine until 2041, meaning the date of the trust fund being exhausted. Unfortunately, the politicians kick the can down the road.
As they say, there are a few basic options, and one or a combination of them will happen.
1. Start raising the retirement age for full benefits.
2. Make Social Security “means tested” so that more affluent people get a lesser benefit.
3. Reduce benefits
4. increase payroll taxes
5. have the system sell bonds on Wall Street to raise money
6. invest the trust fund money in the stock market to get greater returns.
7. Run the government money printing presses overtime to pay all promised benefits, but increase inflation by doing so. This results in paying all promised benefits in dollars with less buying power.
Some combination of the above will happen in the future. Some future presidents and Congresses will have to do something to “balance the budget” of the Social Security fund.
Where in your list is the “allow workers to establish private accounts with a portion of their social security taxes” and allow them to be invested in our capital markets? That option would (along with some of the modifications in your list), over time, transition the system to being self-funded and without the mega-shock that the system will have to go through since the required reform has been “kicked down the road”.
Notice that the Dems just can’t bring themselves to address this obvious “structural deficiency”. They are happy to embrace the call for massive policy changes to address “man-made global warming” (based on those flimsy climate models) but ignore this looming crisis. I guess they know the mainstream media will never hold them accountable.