 Another difference between then and now, says Blauhaus, baby boomers are retiring and there are fewer workers paying into the system. So the gap between payroll taxes coming in and Social Security benefits going out has been widening for years. So now if you wait till the 2030s and say, OK, let's try to fix the trust fund at the last minute. Well, you can't do that anymore because by then the annual shortfall is so large that there's no realistic way you could close it.