It's long overdue for us to address this directly. These are your brothers, your sisters, your family members. Uh This is what's at stake here. Social Security. The most successful anti poverty program in the US is facing *** serious funding problem. The impact will be felt by nearly all Americans no matter what generation. So how did we get here? Can we bring this program back onto stable ground? The Social Security Act of 1935 signed by President Roosevelt intended to reduce poverty among the elderly by guaranteeing income in retirement. This social security measure gives at least some protection to 30 millions of our citizens. Fast forward to 2023. About 67 million people receive social security benefits. That's one in five Americans. The program provides support to those who are retired, disabled or families where *** spouse or parent dies. According to an analysis by the center on budget and policy priorities without social security. Over 20 2 million more adults and Children would be below the poverty line. This program specifically impacts older women and people of color who have fewer retirement resources outside of Social Security and its future is in peril. Right now, there's *** significant amount of uncertainty facing near retirees in terms of what will they actually get from the program. There's even *** significant amount of uncertainty for people in their thirties and forties. They don't know whether they will be able to rely on social security or not in the future. This is Gopi Shoda. She's the director of the Retirement Security Project at Brookings Institute. Her research includes the sustainability of public programs serving elderly and vulnerable populations. So how does social security work? The program is funded on *** pay as you go basis through taxes on earnings up to *** certain amount, both employees and their employers split the payment. The annual taxable maximum varies each year. In 2023 it was around 168,000 per worker, which means today's workers are paying into the funds for current beneficient social security can also tap into its two trust funds, the old age and survivors insurance trust fund and the disability insurance trust fund. These trust funds act like reservoirs. They hold surplus funds and can be drawn out to pay benefits when the program runs in deficit. Nice. Right. But we've been drawing from the trust funds since 2010 and experts say the funds are expected to be depleted around 2035. Experts point to two main reasons longer life expectancy and *** decline in fertility rates. According to the US census around 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 years old each day. By 2030 all boomers estimated to be around 73 million people will be at least age 65. This demographic shift is known as the gray tsunami. That's *** lot of people eligible to receive social security benefits. And with life expectancy rates in the US, averaging in the mid seventies, they could be receiving them for *** while. At the same time, fertility rates have declined since there's more receivers than contributors. The ratio of worker to beneficient is thrown off balance. This dynamic places the program into *** deficit that could result in *** slash in benefits for millions of folks in the early 19 eighties. Severe inflation and lower than expected wages put Social Security trust funds at risk of not being able to cover the full benefits. In 1983 Congress passed Social Security amendments to prevent the program from becoming insolvent. The changes included increasing the total payroll tax, delaying the cost of living adjustment *** few months and increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67. That was the last time Social Security had any sort of major reform which was over 40 years ago. And to continue delaying reform could have *** drastic impact on both beneficient and contributors which are most American. So what are the proposed solutions? One option is to cut benefits. This would require no action from Congress. An immediate cuts to benefits would amount to around *** 21% cut to all current and future beneficiaries in order for the program to remain solvent if benefit cuts were implemented on *** slow roll out. Experts predict it would create *** 25% decrease. Another option is to increase the retirement age but goa has another idea known as progressive price indexing. It would change the way that benefits are calculated in such *** way that affects higher income earners more than lower income beneficiaries. Other solutions include increasing the program's revenue. For example, implementing an immediate tax hike would require an immediate 3.4% payroll tax increase. *** more gradual tax hike would raise taxes of combined earnings up to 16.6% by 2050. These options would require *** sign of approval by Congress Social Security is also only invested in us treasury bonds which provide *** safe but low rate of return. So some have been calling for Social Security to invest in assets that are riskier but have *** potential higher reward. The challenge with that is you have to balance the trade offs that might come with potentially higher returns but also more volatility. Goa says another option would be to increase the taxable maximum which would increase the revenue to the program. Now it would also increase potentially benefits for those higher income earners. But the way that the formula works, uh it wouldn't increase benefits by as much as the increase in revenues. So that's why an increase in the taxable maximum does improve the financial status of the program. Policymakers can also look into *** mixture of increasing payroll taxes and cutting benefits. So there are options. And for decades, policy makers have been introducing proposals to solve this growing issue. But the one major roadblock getting policy makers to agree on *** solution. Lately, we see both sides promising not to touch anyone's benefits and but also no willingness to also increase revenue. So that results in an impasse while there's *** myriad of solutions. The one thing experts can agree on is the necessity to act. Now, the solution that's needed is going to be bigger and affect more people the longer we wait.