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I think that FDR's only real blunder was not realizing how quickly the average life expectancy of a 21-year-old American would rise. The first monthly payment of Social Security was issued in 1940 to a 65-year-old. Of all the men who were born in 1875 and made it to 21-years-old (thus eliminating the infant mortality effect on life expectancy statistics), about 54% made it to 65 and collected social security. Those were the numbers FDR was working with. A little over half of people, dragged up by women's longer life spans (60% of their cohort made it from 21 to 65), would live to actually collect social security.
By 1960 this number was 60% of men, 70% of women. In 1990 the men who turned 65 that year and got their social security checks represented 72% of their age cohort who made it to 21, along with 83% of women.
Similarly, those men that turned 65 in 1940 were expected to live another 13 years, and collect benefits for all 13. The women, 15 years. In 1990, the men were expected to live 15 years, the women 20. This is all from the Social Security Administration's own website. I'm sure that if you found the actuarial tables on the cohorts turning 65 in 2000, 2010, and 2020, you'd see this number just keep going up.
That's why its going broke. It was designed for a certain amount of people to live, and gosh darn it people just kept on living more.
That was predictable. Life expectancy had been going up at the time.
There were other predictable problems:
It's actually mandated by the program that they do. It purchases treasuries. What would you have them do with it?
Anything other than US treasuries. The whole point of the trust fund should be not to require government action to repay.
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