Let's not be like the liberals and pretend that we can have our cake and eat it too.
I believe we have recently crossed-over to the point that one-hundred percent of SS taxes are distributed as benefits to our present retirees. The only way to put the sum you mention into an individual account would be to raise SS taxes by 50%.
Young people would be well advised not to fall for such a trick. All these programs start out well-meaning enough, but government controls ensure failure.
So-called "safety nets" encourage people to behave in ways that they would never imagine if not for the net. Youngsters need to see irresponsible elderly people suffering for their mistaken ways. Only when there are personal consequences for personal misbehavior will people pay attention.
I am not willing to let the dems play poison the well politics and foreclose constructive structural reform. The transition to a fully funded system would have been easier when SS was still running a surplus, but there would have still been a long-term challlenge of amortizing the unfunded liability. And now the hill has gotten steeper. But a fully funded system is still the way to go.
The alternative is to borrow ever more simply to prop up a bankrupt system that pays a pitifully low — and for many participants, a negative— rate of return.
I do not subscribe to the view that Social Security is now too bankrupt to fix, so we must plunge blindly along shovelling good money after bad.