https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/18/social-security-predictions-questions-answers/ Not really big news, but it is 2 years sooner than last years projections That’s a big change in one year. It would have been much worse if Trump had social security tax ended but that was cut of the big terrible bill. I did find this interesting: They also reassessed their predictions about the U.S. birth rate. While Wednesday’s report still predicts the U.S. fertility rate eventually will reach 1.9 children per woman, up from 1.6 currently, the trustees now see that change fully occurring by 2050, instead of their previous prediction of 2040 — which means a longer period of fewer workers paying into the program. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the report before its official release, a senior government official said that a crackdown on immigration — which generally harms Social Security’s bottom line because immigrants pay more money into the program than they claim in benefits — might prevent that fertility rate from ever being realized. “Historically, the immigrant population has had higher fertility rates,” the official said.
Already indirectly mentioned there is a very simple solution to the declining number of workers paying into the system. It's called legal immigration.
Any plan to save social security should include a sunset of spousal benefits (those received by the non-worker, non-disabled spouse while the other still lives) and survivor benefits (those received by the non-worker or less-well-paid-throughout-life spouse who is now a widow or widower), though I wouldn't object to a revenue/cost-neutral civilian version of the military SBP to replace the latter. (That is: if you and your spouse decided one of you would be the "provider", said provider bears the risk of the other spouse living a long time, instead of everyone chipping in.) Social security is a fine program to insure those who outlive the actuarial tables and those who get disabled through no fault of their own. It shouldn't ever have been a means to prop up single-earner couples. Certainly now, when we are much closer to gender equality than 50+ years ago; we need to move on from the notion that house-spouses (face facts, housewives, mostly) are some social good to whom we all owe support. This would be a big step towards long-term (i.e.; 2060-range) stability, though I confess it would still create a "doughnut hole" problem in the intermediate term.
