A Major Point Missed In The Social Security Solvency and Reform Debate (BUT IS IT TRULY ENOUGH??)

This article is basically admitting that the SS trust fund was never actuarially-sound; it was always designed to be "funded" ultimately by current payroll tax pay-ins; i.e. on the backs of current workers. And that only worked historically with both a rapidly-expanding population AND swiftly growing GDP -- two both things lacking now.

Ok, so what about the solution of passing a general (flat or progressive) supplemental income tax to pay off SS's legacy debt? That is certainly better than doing nothing (leaving the burden, by default, as a regressive tax on the poorest workers), but it still probably won't be enough to support retirees in the long run. Why? Because the government has been significantly, structurally lying about inflation for a long time. So even if SS is reformed by redistributing the legacy debt portion, making it "solvent through 2090", there's the slight problem that, at that time, the SS payments will likely not be enough to support your average house pet -- let alone a human retiree. Note that , if the government is under-estimating inflation in its SS costs indexing by only 1% per year, in 74 years, each dollar of SS payouts will only be worth about 50 cents in today's terms. If the government is off by 2% (which may still, in our estimation, be on the low end), then each 2090 Social Security buck will only be worth about 23 cents compared to today.