Needed Change

As Social Security is expected to be insolvent in the upcoming decade because of lack of workers and longer life expectancy, reform must be made to prevent an economic collapse. The Social Security's annual trustee report from 2014 believes their own program will need "legislative changes...to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers" (Trustees). These consequences are increases in the national debt, which is being added to because of the lack of workers in retirement. This is all from the after effects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security law in 1935. At first everything went well because the people who were the first beneficiaries of the system got a retirement at little cost. The number of workers far outnumbered the beneficiaries and this lead to an influx in money. This is from WWII with the baby-boomer population sustaining the retirees for the previous generation. However, the last of the baby-boomers was in 1964 and since then, the population has decreased dramatically in the United States. This means there are less people in the labor force who pay taxes towards Social Security. In addition to lack of workers paying into the system, the report also goes over another problem of "increas[ed] longevity" to the population (Trustees). People are living longer than the system projected and this has caused a tremendous unexpected shortfall in money.

Below is the evidence!