If there's ever a significant population crunch of working age people, it would be in trouble. In 2018, the cost of the Social Security program exceeded total revenues for the first time.
At current rates, Social Security is projected to be insolvent by 2034.
The only ways to mitigate this is to spend less or make more. But no one wants to pay more and no one wants to give up anything.
My personal retirement plans assume no social security. Anything I may get in old age is a nice bonus, but in my planning, it's not the beef.
I disagree. The whole hot political topic of "illegal immigration" is as a side effect - seemingly a successful solution to motivate (foreign) people to bump the population. Specifically - "if you have a kid in the US, the kid is automatically a citizen, you don't have to pay taxes, you don't need a green card, you work under the table so make $0 on paper and thus qualify for free food and housing (welfare) and free healthcare (medicaid)".
Honestly if we gave such a deal to young non-foreign american women free and clear, likely we'd be seeing a lot more childbirths.
Despite all the economic burden and political strife this program has caused, it may in fact extend the life of the nation and welfare.
Political candidates (Carter and Reagan) promised reductions in federal spending, but couldn't get past the obvious lack of any real discretionary control due to the size of the biggest ticket items such as the entitlements and military. The conservative message of "entitlements will make you immoral" was replaced by "entitlements are unsustainable," making it sound like serious economics but without any real basis.