not a fan of SS...this should have been privatized decades ago...but I have reached that age and paid for it all my life and expect to have it....
that being said....if it was kept a separate fund from the general...as it was designed...there would be enough money in it...though not a tremendous amount..it would still be in the black.
How would you do that? Have the Mint print up a bunch of $1,000,000 bills and store them in Ft. Knox?
It depends on what they did with the separate fund.
As currently implemented, the "trust fund" was essentially invested in US Treasury bonds. They aren't marketable bonds, but they are bonds: they really do exist in a file cabinet in some government office.
If the "trust fund" had been kept separate and just invested in real US Treasury bonds, the outcome would have been the same: the return on investment would have been very similar, and would have to be redeemed with current tax revenues.
The only way that the "trust fund" would have done any better is to invest it in something OTHER than US government bonds, that have historically yielded a better return. Of course, there have been multiple opportunities to do better, but also many to do worse.
And frankly, I think that if the Social Security administration had invested it in something else, they would have screwed it up. It would have Solyendra multiplied by thousands.
Congress would have never let competent investment managers choose assets wisely, based on yield, risk, etc. They would have been constantly interfering: you have to invest in this boondoggle, you can't invest in this politically-incorrect industry. The results would likely have been worse than it is now.
The real problem with Social Security is demographics and policy. If benefit payments had been tied to sound actuarial projections, it would be in much better shape. But, between the unsupportable cost-of-living increases and the unfunded disability benefits, Social Security has turned into a mess.