The Social Security Fix Nobody Wants to Talk About

Millions of Americans worry about Social Security — whether they will get the full retirement paychecks promised to them in years to come. And many younger people believe — incorrectly, in my view — that by the time they are ready to retire, Social Security will no longer be there for them.

The issue is deemed so thorny in Washington that most politicians dance gingerly around it. The latest annual Social Security Trust Funds report in May said that unless action was taken, benefit cuts of roughly 20 percent would have to start in 2033.

Yet when you stop and really look at the problem, it turns out that what’s required for fixing Social Security is no big deal.

This isn’t a bold claim. It’s based on hard numbers calculated by Alicia Munnell, a Boston College economics professor who is among the nation’s premier experts on Social Security.

An increase in the 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax of 3.5 percentage points — half borne by employers and half by employees — is all that’s needed to keep full Social Security benefits flowing in the 2030s and beyond, Professor Munnell explained in a telephone conversation.

She also stressed that even if Congress did nothing at all to fix Social Security, you would still get most of your promised benefits. That’s because most of the money financing Social Security checks comes from the payroll taxes being paid regularly by working people. Income from the system’s trust funds, which are dwindling, supplements it. Enough money will be going into the system from taxes to pay about 80 percent of benefits even if the trust funds run down to zero. But Professor Munnell doesn’t expect that to happen.