Most of what you say is fine, but with all due respect, this is silly talk.
They say that because it's reality. As it's structured now, it's not taking in enough. As you can see, it ran a $56B deficit in '21, and it's only going to get worse, because the demographics are getting worse. For the most part, productive people (especially white, non-Mormons) aren't having children at anywhere near the pace they used to. That means fewer productive taxpayers to close the deficit. The only reason this doesn't get much attention is that it's politically inconvenient (and potentially catastrophic) to one side, but it's a serious long term problem even if we entertain the "trust fund" illusion. We've known about the problem for at least 40 years, pretended to fix it then (but didn't), and now we don't even pretend any more. We just ignore it and wait for catastrophe.
Two points on this. First, was it smart to print $1-2 trillion? Or to put it another way, do you like 8 percent inflation? Most of us don't, and few feel the pain of that more than Social Security recipients. It's a pain in the *** for most people and strains their budgets, but it's horrific for senior citizens living on fixed incomes.
Second, $1-2 trillion sounds like a lot, but Social Security has almost $60T in unfunded liabilities. If you think we should print $60T (even over a long period of time), you may as well kiss the United States economy (and therefore the United States) goodbye. It's over.
And just FYI - as bad as Social Security is, it's a cakewalk compared to Medicare which has over $100T in unfunded liabilities. There's no getting around it. Our social insurance programs for senior citizens are a disaster, and they can be fixed in a few ways. First, they can be dramatically cut (much lower benefits and/or much later retirement). Second, we can dramatically raise taxes on working people and make the programs an even worse deal for them. Third, white people with money can all become Mormons and start having a bunch of kids. Fourth, we can restructure both programs in ways to allow them to take advantage of economic growth, which means greater risk (but likely higher benefits) for recipients. It's pretty much that simple.
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