1) It was built on a principles that were suspect at the time.
2) It has been raided and abused over the years.
3) Politicians REFUSE to own up to the problem out of selfish reasons. (See Republican majority under Bush Admin.)
4) Today many states and governors are greatly expanding health care coverage to middle class kids by using Medicaid.
It will likely be in our lifetime that we will witness the great train wreck and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth from those who will not be able to participate in the great government/politician vote buying scheme.
Again, it’s Medicare and interest that are the real problems, not Social Security. The “estimates of the present value of future expenditures, in excess of contributions over a 75-yr period” for Social Security is -$6.7 trillion. Not chump change for sure, but for Medicare it’s -$34.1 trillion!
BTW, Bush’s Medicare drug plan is -$8.3 trillion of those future Medicare expenditures. That’s more than Social Security.