And there is another factor to be considered:
Even though FR has tons of naysayers, even they have to admit that the bulk of the SS baby boomer money has yet to be printed.
We're talking about HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS of dollars that will hit the streets.
And when you have way, way more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services, the result is ALWAYS the same.
Inflation.
On a massive scale.
Oh, it's printed all right - but it's sitting in the "Social Security Trust Fund" in the form of huge government bonds which by law can't be let out to the public. It constitutes an IOU the government has written to itself - and it has the same effect as an IOU for a billion dollars would have if you wrote to yourself.There is however a hole card - the tax liability of the baby boomers' IRAs and 401(k)s. A baby boomer who retires and draws Social Security will use a nontrivial fraction of that money to pay the income tax on his IRA distributions. So it isn't quite as bad as face value would have it - given a good stock market.
The idea which the Democrats boast of having defeated - "privatizing social security" by investing payroll tax money in stocks and bonds - would not cost the government any money. It would recognize costs that already exist and are kept off the books now, but that is not the same as actually costing the government money. To the extent that it improved the stock market it would actually help bail the government (read, our grandchildren as taxpayers) out of this ghastly problem.