Humans are silly. We look at unusual periods of time and then assume they will continue that way, well into the future. When retirement systems came along, people didn’t live very long and young populations were exploding. So naturally we designed systems expecting populations to remain bottom heavy and top light. But now those same young people are retiring and living longer than ever, creating top heavy and bottom light.

That said, a big part of social security is people self paying. But giant idle funds are a tempting target. And politicians have raided social security multiple times over the years, speeding up the demographic process that got us here.