“And, if somebody wants to offer to give me all the money I’ve contributed to SS and all the money my employers have contributed (ultimately it came out of my pocket), I’ll gladly take it and opt out of the system.”
Have you checked your records from Social Security to see how much you and your employers paid in over the years? I checked mine and it turns out that I am promised to be paid much more than what paid in, if I live out my full life expectancy.
Have someone recalculate that for you, accounting for the interest you would have earned while contributing, and until you exhaust the value of your contributions.
Money has time value. The Social Security "trust fund" is effectively special Treasury Bonds, so you can just use the average Treasury bond yield for each year you made contributions (and drew benefits).
Compound interest adds a great deal to your "balance". If your contributions are anything close to mine, you'll have to live to about age 120 before you exhaust the value of your contributions.