[rufus_foreman]

>> Either the retirement age will need to be raised or its obligations will need to be abandoned

Or the OASDI tax rate could be raised, or the wage cap on the tax could be raised or eliminated, or growth in GDP might turn out to be higher than expected, or life expectancy might turn out to be lower than expected, or the official inflation rate for Social Security might turn out to be lower than the actual rate, or any number of other possibilities.

And if none of those occur, yes, one option would be to slightly raise the retirement age for people who aren't near retirement, or benefits might need to be slightly cut.

That's not unsustainable and it's not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi promised a 50 per cent return in 45 days. Ponzi started a company to promote his scheme in January of 1920, he pled guilty on November 1, 1920. He could not have saved his scheme by reducing the rate of return to 48.5% or adding a few weeks to the maturity of the term. It was truly unsustainable in the old sense of the word, not the new meaning of, "that which has been going on for many decades, will continue to go on for many decades much as it has in the past, but which I do not particularly like".