These are the numbers that matter, although there are wildcards like someone inventing a "Robot & Frank"-style affordable robot that can look after the elderly.
These numbers only matter if you plan on subsisting entirely off of social security in retirement, which even if you are maxing out your SS taxes every year and plan on living a minimum-wage level existence in retirement, is almost impossible mathematically.
If you're under 40 (maybe even 50), wrapping social security income into your retirement calculations is a fool's errand. I'm in my 30's and basically treating it as play money. If it's there I might use it to help buy a car or something in my 80s, but I'm assuming I'll get approximately $0 for everything I've paid in supporting today's retirees.
Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. Meaning it can and will pay out some level of benefits as long as there is the political will to do so. SS catastrophism is all about undermining that political will, and bringing about a self-fulfilling prophecy of collapse, to the benefit of the very wealthiest in this country.
> Meaning it can and will pay out some level of benefits as long as there is the political will to do so
This is trivial. But “some level of benefits” could theoretically mean using all of the nations’s productivity to support the elderly.
The pertinent question is what level of wealth transfer will the working populations tolerate, especially if the current workers believe they will be getting less when it is their turn to receive.
It's probably a reasonable working assumption that eligibility ages may get pushed up, benefits might be trimmed, but the system will still be there--especially given that private sector defined benefit pensions mostly just exist for people who had them decades ago.
> These numbers only matter if you plan on subsisting entirely off of social security in retirement,
Actually, number of workers per retired person matters A LOT regardless how you look at it.
If you disregard imports, the total amount of goods and services produced per capita goes down. No amount of cash can buy more stuff than is for sale in a market. As more and more money chase less and less stuff, inflation has to go up to compensate.
And these two workers can demand more or less what they wish, while old people get poorer and poorer.
And there is a limit to how far down society will let the pensions of the poorest retired people go, so some way will be found to bring enough cash for them to have at least a little.
Meanwhile, the working people can more or less demand what they want in saleries, if the shortage of workers is great enough. And if the government tries to take a lot from them through taxes, they can always go on strike, move abroad or something similar.
Those with savings but no productivity, who are rich without working, they are fair game in such a society.
The word "boomer" is already a slur used against a generation seen as pulling the ladder up after themselves. And as the number of retired people per worked continues to go up, such thinking will just gain traction.
