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but the fact is that most of their “contributions” went to pay a previous beneficiary, so there is nothing to pay them except new money from new taxpayers

Somebody better start breeding fast, because I plan on getting my checks starting at the end of the year. I’ve put over $100 grand into this Ponzi scheme and want some of it back.

Your post encapsulates the contradictory (fraudulent) nature of the Social Security scam:

there are people who paid in a pittance in "Payroll Tax" and got many times that amount in benefits.

OTOH people born later have put in a lot of money over the years - 7.5% of their salary, plus the hidden 7.5% which the employer has to pay and which comes out of the package of compensation which the employer takes into account when deciding how much to offer you in salary/wages. And let's face it, if or forty years you invested 15% of your salary in short-term government bonds - so that you kept up with inflation, and earned a little real interest - you would have a tidy sum available to retire on at age 65.
And I think that is the bottom line. The reality is that SS is a scam, because in fact the current-accounts surplus has been "invested" in government bonds - and although you and I would be thrilled to have a $1 billion government bond, when the government prints that bond it is both an asset and an equal liability to the government. Which only means that the bonds in the "Social Security Trust Fund" are simply fiat money which would, if put on the market to pay for the Retirement Boom, be an engine of inflation. As financial assets to the government they are a paper tiger.