Every year, the Social Security Administration issues a "Trustees Report" that summarizes the program's financing. So every year (see 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, etc.) I cut through all the verbiage and focus the numbers that really matter.

Annual Spending and Revenue

First, here's the data from Table VI.G9 showing annual spending and annual revenue, and the numbers are adjusted for inflation. Everything to the left of the vertical red line is historical data. Everything to the right is an estimate based on "intermediate" economic and demographic projections.

The bad news is that there's a never-ending increase in the program's fiscal burden.

The only good news is that the country presumably will be much richer in the future, so we'll have more income to pay all those taxes and finance all that spending.

Economic Burden

That being said, the fiscal burden is projected to increase faster than our income, so the economic burden of Social Security will increase over time.

But there's also a wild card to consider. Simply stated, we have more data from Table VI.G9 that shows the program has a giant, ever-expanding deficit.

Here are the grim numbers (though not quite as grim as last year when the cumulative shortfall was $43.7 trillion). Once again, everything to the left of the line is historical data and everything to the right is a projection.