Social Security's Fake Crisis- UPDATED

Digby points me to this article about how the media has changed the shaping of the narrative around Social Security to reflect the talking points of right wingers who are opposed to the program.  It reminds me again about how idiotic the whole debate is around Social Security in the US.

There are lots of problems here that are really hard to solve.  Medicare is projected to break the bank if we can't rein in spending, for example.  But Social Security is easy, and there are a bunch of ways we can take its solvency past 2036 (it doesn't run out of money until then).  We can:

1. Raise the ceiling of contributions for people making more than $106,000 (currently we only pay SS taxes on the first $106K of income- if we raised that to the first $140K we could solve the problem right there, nice and clean- that's my favorite solution).  But if you don't like that, we could:
2. Raise the retirement age
3. Decrease benefits to 80% of current levels
4. Raise the contribution for everyone
5. Means-test the program (my least favorite solution- the program is now for all of us, which helps all of us support it)
6. Some combination of 1-5

So there's just no crisis.  Simply put, there is a problem with many solutions, all of which would work, but all of which have positives and negatives.  Unfortunately, the media and the Common Wisdom inside the beltway keep dragging us through the crisis swamp.

UPDATE: Just stumbled upon this post from Kevin Drum explaining ways to fix social security.