Afaik US Social Security running out of money is kind of an illusion as all the money is “invested” with the US government anyway, which is to say that the money is already coming out of the same pot of as all their other spending. It’s not as if once that account hits $0 that to maintain benefits they’d have to ramp up their spending - rather once it hits $0 they’ll be cutting spending, and to maintain benefits would require them to spend what were before it hit $0.
It’s kind of akin to their “debt limit” - it’s just an artificially constructed barrier to their spending they impose on themseves but can tweak whenever they want. This isn’t to say that real barriers won’t appear - for instance maybe the bond market is expecting them to cut spending once it hits $0 and will react poorly if they don’t.
Afaik US Social Security running out of money is kind of an illusion as all the money is “invested” with the US government anyway, which is to say that the money is already coming out of the same pot of as all their other spending. It’s not as if once that account hits $0 that to maintain benefits they’d have to ramp up their spending - rather once it hits $0 they’ll be cutting spending, and to maintain benefits would require them to spend what were before it hit $0.
It’s kind of akin to their “debt limit” - it’s just an artificially constructed barrier to their spending they impose on themseves but can tweak whenever they want. This isn’t to say that real barriers won’t appear - for instance maybe the bond market is expecting them to cut spending once it hits $0 and will react poorly if they don’t.