You can’t count the FICA taxes. Somebody earning $40,000 is really not paying anything in FICA “taxes” because he has been promised he’ll get it all back with interest. Maybe the promise will go bust, but it is not a “tax” so much as a mandatory “retirement plan contribution”. As long as the promise is kept, he’ll make out as though his money was invested at 7% interest.
Somebody earning above the $40,000 mark sees a worse return on his “contribution”, to the point where people that exceed the SS cutoff cap by earning more than $97,400 have gotten screwed completely. They will never get back all the money that was taken, and their “interest” earned will be a negative 2%. To them, FICA really is a “Tax”.
And Medicare tax has no cap. Pity the guy that earned $5M a year and had to pay $150,000 a year for crappy Medicare insurance no better than anybody else that paid a lot less for it.
You really don’t know much about FICA at all do you?
By law, the FICA tax is not connected in any way to Social Security payouts. See Helvering v. Davis (1937) and Flemming v. Nestor (1960).
In short, the FICA taxes are simple income taxes which may be used for any purpose (and have been used exactly that way for many decades now). Payouts are gratuities subject to ammendment or repeal by Congress, and not a contractual arrangement as with actual insurance.