Like, oh, myself and my circle of friends. We’re under 40, we KNOW we’re not going to see dime one of anything we’ve paid in. Ever.
Social Security, as it exists right this second, IS a Ponzi scheme.
My sons are 37 and 41, even if nothing is done to the current SS system, they (and YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS) would still get about an 80% payment. What you KNOW is wrong. One problem is that the very rich don’t pay as big a percent of their income as the less well off. The amount of income on which you have to pay into SS is the amount that 90% of the population earns. That limit is currently $108,000 or thereabouts Thus a person who earns $500,000 does not put any money into SS for $392,000 of their income. Raising the cutoff to 95% or even higher would go a long way to solving the SS problem. I’ll bet there are a lot of ex Wall St. types who wish more of their income had gone into SS, now that they are lucky if they can get a $60,000 a year job, or worse yet are unemployed.