"For at least 40 years, Social Security taxes have taken in more than what has been paid out to retirees."

Yup, I think everyone is in agreement that the system will continue generating a surplus until sometime after 2040.

"By law, the surpluses are "invested" in Treasury bonds, meaning they've been spent by Congress and covered with a government IOU. This is why, despite the government supposedly running a surplus during the late 1990s, the national debt increased every year"

Not trying to be rude here, but yeah. I think we are on the same page WRT understanding how the system works.

The various following phrases are more or less misleading WRT how the system works, and people who use them too much don't understand how the system works or are trying to scare everyone into a course of action they want:

"the government has spent all of your social security money"
"Lock box"
"Bankrupt"
"The system will be exhausted/Insolvent sometinme after 2040"

"Simply raising the tax ceiling as David suggested will do little more than increase the number of IOUs in the system."

I don't think that is strictly the case. the IOU's would still probably be less than the input to the system (IE, I don't think the person making a cool mil a year would get back an amount entirely porportional to what he put in). We'd have to get out the green-shaded hats and the calculators to really be sure. Regardless, the answer is to simply put a cap on total benefits that you can get in a tax year.

I still fundamentally disagree with the language "structural problem". This is an implementation detail, not a foundational or structural issue.

"At present, there is no means test for SS, meaning Ross Perot and the like are eligible for payments just the same as any other senior citizen. Democrats and the Clinton Administration raised taxes on retirees back in 1993, but that money went into the general revenue stream. Means testing a program that has always been sold as a common benefit to everyone won't be easy"

One thing is entirely certain: whatever the fix, someone will not be happy.

". Private accounts are common in several government pension programs. As I've mentioned before, when my wife worked for a city-owned hospital, she didn't pay any SS taxes. Instead, the money that would've gone to SS was put into a private account invested in her choice of mutual funds. I've read that some 3 million government employees participate in similar programs. Here's a question (and I don't know the answer), do employees of the Social Security Administration actually pay into the system? If SS was such a great deal, you'd have government employees demanding to be allowed into the program. That isn't happening because they know they have a much better deal. Why should only government employees have such options?
"

I think everyone pays into SS.

as more of an aside: I don't think even at the inception, SS was ever visualized as the ONLY or even main funder of retirement (SS alone is a miserable existence!), nowdays it helps do what welfare and the minimum wage does/used to do: define a minimum line under which people can not sink in our society, not much better in most cases than a lean subsistence lifestyle with few amenities.

Any changes to SS should keep the goal in mind. False promises of riches, or the revision to some magical system that will bo so great it will completely fund anyones retiuremtn comfortably is very wishful thinking.