I know exactly how much money I have contributed over the years.
It isn't as much as they think.
You apparently don't understand the time value of money.
If I give you $10,000 today, I'm going to expect more than $10,000 in return, 30 years from now. Otherwise, I've given you an interest-free loan.
I've done the same calculations as you have, but I've also accounted for the average long term Treasury bond rates over that period. If you were born in 1955, started work at 21 and worked until 62, a conservative estimate would be that you'd have over $2,000,000 in the bank if you had invested what was forcibly taken into US Treasury bonds.
In order to exhaust that amount with the currently legislated benefits, you'd have to live past about age 120.
>I’ve done the same calculations as you have, but I’ve also accounted for the average long term Treasury bond rates over that period. If you were born in 1955, started work at 21 and worked until 62, a conservative estimate would be that you’d have over $2,000,000 in the bank if you had invested what was forcibly taken into US Treasury bonds.
So by virtue of making utterly specious assumptions (that you were investing), you come up with a nonsensical value. How useful.
What you paid in is a fixed amount. It has nothing to do with what that money might have been worth.
Yeah, it would have been great if the government had allowed everyone to invest that cash instead of taking it. There would be a bunch of happy people right now, having turned that $130K into a real retirement portfolio. One that could have kept the owners in style in their golden years.
But the government had other plans. It took your money (and everyone else’s) and turned into a money losing proposition. A boondoggle on an epic scale.