The "shortfall" in Social Security is political sleight-of-hand, a tax dodge for the wealthy.
From the video transcript. Dean Baker:
...They love to talk about the issue of aging and it's kind of, you know, strange however you want to put it. The point about aging is it is true, we are getting older, that's actually a good thing in the sense that people are living longer. Most of us think that's a good thing because as medical care and our wellbeing improve people do live longer lives. But what's weird is that this isn't new. This has always been true. It's not unexpected. People knew that we were going to live longer. You can go back our projections that were made back in the '30's, they are almost exactly on line in terms of how much longer people would live and the increase in the size of the retired population relative to the working population. So, none of that is new. We knew about it, it's not a new story. There's nothing qualitatively different from what's projected to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years than what's happened in the last 30, 40 years. So, that's not new. What is new, and Speaker Ryan is less anxious to talk about this is that we've had a large upwardly distribution in wage income. And the reason why that matters you referred to the cap on wage income - $127,000. Income above the cap is not subject to taxation. The last time there was a major overhaul of the program in 1983, they set the cap at a level where only 10% of wage income went over the top, avoided taxation. Today, because there's been so much upwardly distribution of income, close to 20%, almost twice as large a share of wage income goes over the top and avoids taxation. That's a big part of the projected shortfall in social security. I'm not saying it's the whole story, but it's a very big part of the story. And it's a part of the story that Speaker Ryan and other Republicans aren't anxious to talk about...