Friedberg @ 00:49:55Inconclusive
governmenteconomy
If and when U.S. Social Security reaches insolvency (projected in the 2030–2035 window), the federal government will respond by creating and issuing additional dollars (monetization) to cover the shortfall rather than allowing promised Social Security benefits to go unpaid.
Those Social Security payments may not end up coming back to us if Social Security is allowed to go bankrupt. So ultimately, the government has to step in and issue new dollars to make that up. Then the economic question is what happens to the value of the dollar, what happens to the value of the economy, and so on as you issue trillions of dollars to fill these holes?View on YouTube
Explanation
As of November 30, 2025, U.S. Social Security has not yet reached the projected insolvency date window (roughly 2030–2035), so Friedberg’s conditional prediction cannot be evaluated.
Key points:
- The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) trust funds are still paying full scheduled benefits as of 2025.
- The 2024 Social Security Trustees Report projects the combined OASDI trust fund will be depleted around 2035, after which incoming payroll taxes would cover only about 83% of scheduled benefits if no changes are made (tax increases, benefit cuts, general-revenue transfers, or money creation).
- The prediction specifically concerns what the federal government will do at the point of insolvency (e.g., creating/issuing additional dollars to cover the shortfall vs. allowing benefit cuts). That situation has not yet occurred, and no binding policy decision has been forced by actual trust-fund exhaustion.
Because the triggering event (trust fund insolvency in the 2030–2035 window) lies in the future relative to today, it is too early to say whether the government will in fact monetize the shortfall or allow benefit reductions. Therefore the correct status for this prediction is “inconclusive (too early)”.