Posted on 08/31/2026 9:16:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has put a precise number on something many people already suspected: most people retiring this decade will collect more from Social Security than they and their employers paid in.
Using Congressional Budget Office figures, CRFB finds scheduled benefits equal about 133% of combined payroll taxes on a present-value basis. In plain terms, the typical retiree is slated to get back $1.33 for every $1 contributed, plus interest. Lower-income retirees do even better; the top fifth of earners roughly break even on the combined worker-plus-employer tax.
Those numbers are not a rounding error. They are why the program is on a collision course with insolvency — the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund is projected to be depleted around 2032, after which automatic cuts would hit unless Congress acts. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. Current workers fund current retirees. The “trust fund” is an accounting device, not a lockbox of your personal savings plus investment returns.
That reality undercuts the popular slogan that beneficiaries are “just getting their own money back.” CRFB published the analysis in part to answer that claim. For most people outside the highest earners, the math does not support it.
Some conservatives have used this fact to reframe Social Security as welfare rather than an earned pension. They are not wrong about the structure. But if that is the standard, consistency quickly becomes inconvenient.
If Social Security is welfare, why finance it with a flat payroll tax that hits low-wage workers hardest? FICA takes 12.4% for Social Security (plus Medicare) with no deduction for the working poor. A program sold as social insurance for people we want in the labor force is funded in a way that makes work more expensive at the bottom. Treating it as welfare would argue for scrapping the dedicated payroll tax and paying for it out of general, progressive revenue. Higher earners would pay more. That is the logical implication, not a talking point most fiscal hawks enjoy.
The same “I paid in, I want my money back” test does not stop at Social Security. Adjusted for inflation, the federal government has spent tens of trillions on national defense over a lifetime. Individual taxpayers received no itemized return on Vietnam, the Iraq wars, the Cold War, or current operations. The Constitution never required a large standing army; the Second Amendment assumes an armed citizenry. If the metric is personal ROI, a lot of Pentagon spending fails it.
The same applies to schools if you have no children, and to highways if you do not drive or live in the states that receive the transfers. Once government is treated as a personal investment account, almost every program looks like a bad deal for someone.
The same pattern appears at the state level, and the political alignment is awkward. Federal data compiled by the Rockefeller Institute of Government show that many states receive far more in federal spending than their residents pay in federal taxes. The biggest net beneficiaries tend to be lower-income, rural, and Republican-leaning states. Alaska, West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana and several others consistently come out ahead on a per-resident basis. Virginia and Maryland look generous too, largely because of federal payrolls and contractors clustered around Washington. New Mexico is an outlier on the Democratic side.
The states that typically send more than they get back include New Jersey, New York, California, Washington, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. If the rule is “stop subsidizing people who take more than they put in,” a lot of red-state budgets would feel it first.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has praised Ayn Rand. Wisconsin, like many states in that cohort, is a net recipient of federal dollars. Applying the Social Security critique uniformly would require telling those constituents to stop living off transfers they did not fully fund.
None of this proves Social Security should be left untouched. The program is underfunded relative to promised benefits, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. What it does show is that “give me my money back” is a terrible organizing principle for a national government. Taxes fund public goods, insurance, and transfers that do not produce a clean personal ledger. People who apply that ledger only to Social Security, and then stop, are not making a fiscal argument. They are picking the one program they dislike and ignoring the rest of the balance sheet.
If the country wants to debate whether Social Security should become a more explicitly progressive welfare program, or whether benefits should be means-tested, or whether the payroll tax should be replaced, that debate is worth having. Selective accounting is not.
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Are these numbers adjusted for inflation?
Two million abortions/year since Roe v. Wade (1973).
The first two million would have begun entering the workforce and having children of their own around 1991.
Their children would have begun entering the workforce and having children of their own around 2009.
We are now one year away (2009 + 18 = 2027) from having the great-grandchildren of the first-aborted generation entering the workforce.
The consequences of the Aborted Generations:
Obviously, the Social Security crisis of too many baby boomer retirees drawing out and too few younger workers paying in.
Less obviously, colleges and universities running short of eighteen year old freshman, hence a shift toward “lifetime learning” coupled with legislatively mandated “continuing education”.
And finally, fewer young adults available for military service.
Are you happy, sexually liberated Boomers?
Misleading, the higher income earner subsidizes “most” retirees. It is lower middle class and poor who may get back more but higher income get back much less. Especially after tax.
Ping
I’m sure sorry to hear about your cancer life expectancy, Myrddin...
I disagree with this article’s math for myself. I put in more than 50 years of a steady paycheck and it would be totally unfair to take that away from me.
I’m 70 and have a multitude of ills, I don’t think I’ll get back what I put in over 50+ years of back-breaking labor and sweat.
I hope things aren’t as gloomy as they appear to you, I’ve always enjoyed reading you posts. I spent years in North Idaho and I enjoy you references to that area, as well.
Take care,
Ed
The numbers are definitely not adjusted to take into account what you would earn on your “investment”.
I have been probably median or below my whole working life. Assuming a 6% return I would equal SS with my family getting $1 million at my death. At 8% I would be at 1.5 times my SS with family getting $1.65 million.
A) It figures that the math would rear its ugly head just as I'm getting to "retirement age". Whatever the hell "retirement" means.
B) National Defense is one of the few things that the federal government is responsible for as outlined in The Constitution. The government strayed from its lane decades ago. I doubt it will ever get back into it.
If EBT can cover tattoos, the government can supplement an SS shortfall with its printed money.
Let’s do some different math:
Since they consider it ‘outrageous’ that I would receive 133% of what I and my employer contributed... but is it?
I asked DuckAI to assume instead of contributing 100K in SS over the last 40 years, I invested it in the S&P 500 in bi-weekly installments. To reflect my lower salary at the beginning, I told AI to make the first biweekly installment 1/4 tje size of the final installment.
Assuming the biweekly contributions increased steadily from the first payment to the last:
Total contributed: $100,000
Number of payments: 40 × 26 = 1,040
First biweekly payment: approximately $38.46
Final biweekly payment: approximately $153.84
Average payment: approximately $96.16
Using the actual year-by-year S&P 500 total returns—including reinvested dividends—instead of a flat 10% assumption, the result is approximately:
Ending value: $1,280,000–$1,300,000
I used these assumptions:
Period: 1985 through 2024, representing 40 years
Contributions: 1,040 biweekly installments
Total contributed: $100,000
Contribution pattern: installments increase linearly
First installment: about $38.46
Final installment: about $153.84
Annual market performance: actual S&P 500 total return for each year
Dividends: reinvested
Contributions: treated as occurring throughout each year rather than all at year-end
The annual contribution totals rise from roughly $1,000 in the first year to $4,000 in the final year. Applying the historical annual returns—including strong periods such as the late 1990s, 2013–2017, and 2019–2021, as well as downturns such as 2000–2002 and 2008—produces an ending balance around $1,290,000. Historical S&P 500 total-return series include dividends, which is the appropriate measure for this calculation.
slickcharts.com
That means approximately:
Total invested: $100,000
Investment growth: about $1,190,000
Final value: about 13 times the amount contributed
So the fact that I will only get 133% of what I paid in IS outrageous, as I should have gotten 1300%
Very happy indeed. My wife and I, both 80 have been receiving full Social Security for the last 13 years, with hopefully many more years ahead of us. And just think, we were the first of the Baby Boomers to retire, being born in 1946. That means 17 years of additional Boomers are right behind us! To make things even better, we both receive monthly IRA disbursements to our bolster our income. We travel to Europe frequently thanks to the generous Medicare benefits that provided me with new knees. Life is indeed very, very good.
I moved to Chubbuck, Idaho in Dec 2000. A nice change from San Diego. The place has grown significantly since the move. It was still a good choice in hindsight.
One of my high school classmates was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few years ago. He was sharing his experience with the Whipple procedure. I was completely unaware of the details. In 2024, I had a blood test for an insurance application. It failed on high ALP and GGT. That started a process resulting in a diagnosis and adenocarcinoma of the Ampulla of Vater in the presence of high grade dysplasia in April 2024. A Whipple was scheduled for June 25, 2024. I became acquainted first hand with the Whipple procedure. My friend and I muse about being "Whipple bros". A little gallows humor. He received excellent news today. He will be getting the new daraxonrasib medication in the next two weeks. Great news to arrest his Stage IV cancer. That might well buy him another 15 months on the green side of the lawn.
I hope your health holds up and you have an opportunity to enjoy some decent time in retirement. Getting along in a 70 year old body is challenge enough.
Social Security nears ‘cliffs edge’ — putting recipients at risk of losing $500 a month
And even that 1300% dramatically understates the return I would have gotten if I’d invested instead of paying into the ripoff SS system:
The 1300% returns is the balance of my S&P 500 portfolio at retirement - it doesn’t reflect the growth of that investment going forward, so even if I withdraw (spend) the monthly amounts SS would have paid over the next 20-30 years (if I live to 95) my $1.3M investment will continue to compound.
Anyone who thinks Boomers got a good deal from being forced to pay into SS is a complete moron.
Did the “experts” take into consideration all of the money DC stole from the AlGore LoxBox (aka the SSA & Medicare “trust funds?”) I didn’t think so.
“… most people retiring this decade will collect more from Social Security than they and their employers paid in.”
So what? I will also do that with my 401k and my Roth IRA.
Yes, it’s a ripoff. In addition to that you would have left your heirs those assets. My first wife died young and the money just evaporated. She never got to collect it.
That is a rather overused generality...the only way that statement is even close is if you think the Feds are going “belly up” and will renege on the national debt (T-Bills).
The Social Security OASI fund has over $2 Trillion in it currently...in the form of “special treasury bills” that are only issued to SSA and billions of dollars of those T-bills are redeemed monthly to pay SS recipients (same T-Bill system since 1937).
I guess the “lockbox raid” argument goes something like “the federal government can spend “extra” SS fund money because of the T-bill issuance”, but the Feds must PAY OUT billions per month in interest & principal on those SSA T-bills. $61.6 Billion in interest earned on those SSA T-bills in 2025...without this system SS would be in even bigger trouble.
It would be fiscally criminal for the SSA trust fund to sit on $2 Trillion in cash and earn NO interest.
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