Baby Bonds could replace Social Security at a fraction of the cost

I’ve always felt that the only way to curb government spending is to completely overhaul Social Security (healthcare too but that’s another conversation). Inspired by the Trump baby bond idea, I used Grok to run some numbers.

First assumption - the average monthly Social Security payment is ~$2,000. If I want to cover 25 years of Social Security (ages 65-90), I would need ~$750k at the age of 65, assuming a 4% rate of return. I think this is a pretty safe estimate considering most people don’t make it 90. But even if they do, most people have supplemental retirement income (401ks) and family members to help take care past the age of 90. So in other words, the government needs to get $750k in your hands at the age of 65 to equal the benefits of Social Security.

If we take a conservative rate of return of 4%, you would need $60,000 at birth to have $750,000 65 years later. There are roughly 3.6 million births in the US per year. $60,000 times 3.6 million equals $216 billion per year.

In contrast, the government pays $1.5 trillion per year in Social Security. A baby bond program would be 15% of the cost while matching the benefits. Now obviously there would be a transition period where we’d be paying both programs. But a temporary addition of $216 billion to our budget isn’t going to put us under. In fact, it might be the only way for us to solve our spending problem.

Why aren’t more conservatives touting baby bonds as a replacement to Social Security? How can Rand Paul seriously suggest raising the SS age as a solution instead of this? It’s time we bring this idea to the mainstream.