Seven years from now, more or less, the Social Security system will go bust. There isn’t enough coming in from people still working to cover the benefits going to people who are retired.

For now, the Social Security Administration is using a credit balance it has at the U.S. Treasury. In 2033 or, possibly, a year earlier, that checking account will be empty. Absent corrective legislation, which Congress is in no hurry to enact, all benefits will be sliced 23%.

The government can create a temporary patch by just borrowing more money and adding to the budget deficit. A little bit of help would come from having the old-age fund, the one that pays most benefits, snatch the assets of the fund that covers disabled workers. But at some point legislators will have to correct the imbalance in the system.

The problem is that people are living too long and there aren’t enough young people chipping in. We’re short of babies and immigrants.

Some unpleasantness in inevitable. Either old people will get less, young people will pay more or, very likely, both groups will suffer. This survey looks at different proposals for setting Social Security on the right path. You can gauge what they will do to your pocketbook.

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Not exactly. A Ponzi scheme has money from new victims covering the payouts to earlier ones. That’s how Social Security worked until 2021. Now there isn’t enough cash coming in to pay off older people. In other words, Social Security does not have sufficient financial integrity to be considered a Ponzi scheme.

“Insolvency,” often used to describe the system’s finances, doesn’t do justice to the situation,........

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