I have “donated” around $300,000 to Social Security and Medicare during my working career.
I found out at age 52 that I have Leukemia and was told my life expectancy was anywhere from 62 to 67, with the caveat that you never know what Medical advances might increase my expected expiration date. So far, so good, I made it to 60.
I will collect my first Social Security payment in 24 months time at age 62 if I live that long. I will end up getting a morsel of the “contributions” I made and the lost investment income that money would have generated being invested for the past 40 + years.
P.S. I love Big Pharma. Without them I wouldn’t have lived long enough to see the first Communist President.
I’m not advising everyone to reject SS.
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1979. She beat it.
In 1995 she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She beat it to a draw but was never the same vibrant person as before that cancer. By 2000 she was an invalid.
In 2005 more cancer; tumors near her spine. Radiation zapped that away but by then her immune system had been compromised.
She succumbed to a simple lung infection when antibiotics were not effective.
None of the above medical care could have been done without Medicare or Big Pharma.
It is there for those who must have it - that’s just IMHO.
I am kind of in the opposite boat. I lived in Hong Kong for many years and did not work for a US company so I have paid almost nothing into the Social Security system. I am now exempt because I work for the government of Guam. I don’t know if I even qualify for it should I retire. But I don’t want to back to the US and put money into the system. If I do qualify I will not take it. We don’t need the money