Findings complement other reports identifying the fiscal deterioration of Social Security.
Social Security is facing $63 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, according to the 2024 Old-Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance (OASDI) trustees report.
The report looked at two things: how much money will be missing indefinitely and how much will be missing in the next 75 years. The report determined that there will be a permanent $62.8 trillion deficit and about a $23 trillion shortage for the next 75 years.
Officials explained that these numbers show how much less money they will have after the money saved up in trust funds runs out.
“The annual shortfalls after trust fund reserve depletion rise slowly and reflect increases in life expectancy,” the report reads.
“The summarized shortfalls over the infinite horizon, as percentages of taxable payroll and GDP, are larger than the shortfalls for the 75-year period.”
OASDI trustees noted that the shortfall could be eliminated if the combined payroll tax rate was raised to “about 17.0 percent” or if there was a “permanent reduction in benefits for all current and future beneficiaries by about 26.5 percent.”
Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, told The Epoch Times that assessing the current infinite unfunded liability is imperative.
“There’s nothing in economics that says you should just look at 75 years and assume everybody’s going to be dead the day after,” Kotlikoff said.
“It’s like operating on half of the cancer, removing half a cancer, and telling your patient to come back in 10 years, and when they do, it’s twice as big, and you’re operating out on half.
“[That’s] the practice here in our country dealing with Social Security.”
This is not the first report to spotlight the deteriorating fiscal state of the retirement scheme and other federal programs.
In February, the Treasury Department released the “Financial Report of the United States Government.”
It concluded that U.S. taxpayers face more than $78 trillion in long-term unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare.
By Andrew Moran
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