Run the experiment
The erosion input is a compounding annual haircut to the labor-income base: the payroll tax base and the wage share of the income tax. For calibration, the entire post-1970 US labor-share decline averaged about 0.1% per year in these units, so 1%/yr sustained for five decades sits far outside historical experience. At zero erosion this page shows the published projections.
The thresholds
Bisected on the same engine (central scenario; the plateau test holds the three instruments at the top of the automatic band; horizon extended to 2115). World A, where capital captures half of what labor loses, has a plateau band, about 0.8–6.1%/yr at the ruled coupling: past the band's top the wealth-transfer registers compound fast enough to retire the debt again.
| Outcome | Erosion only | World B — stagnation |
|---|---|---|
| Retirement slips +10 years | 0.46%/yr | 0.24%/yr |
| Retirement slips +25 years | 0.53%/yr | 0.29%/yr |
| Debt plateaus at the top of the automatic band; Congress holds the next move | 0.64%/yr | 0.34%/yr |
Zeroing immigration moves the retirement date by zero years. Intake is demand-contingent by design (a visa exists only where domestic hiring fails at the domestic-equivalent wage), so solvency is independent of border politics.
How to read the results
In the worst case the decision returns to Congress by statute: past the plateau threshold the governor reaches the top of its automatic band, the debt holds about flat there, and Congress holds the next move. The thresholds include the governor's symmetry: whenever the projected retirement date comes in two or more years early, the three rates step down inside the band, which returns money to taxpayers and spends some stress margin; both effects are in the numbers. If a run retires the debt and then shows deficits reopening late in the century, the erosion has outlasted the retirement, and the readout flags it.
The retirement claim: the launch rates are set so the central path retires the debt by the statutory 2080 with no automatic step, and our grandchildren will not inherit this debt. The slips this laboratory measures are slips of that projection.
Source: the stress inputs, coupling presets, and bisection harness are in the published source (scripts/stress-scenarios.ts); the same engine produces every projection on the full scoring page and the master tables.