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Well, with that nonsensical argument, everything other than the money in your hands is gone. Gee, I hope you don’t put money in a bank. There is an accounting somewhere, sufficient to issue an IOU, as there is to send you a bank statement once a month. Sure it is not in a “Social Security fund” per se because that money has been subsumed into the general fund.

Technically, the money I put in the bank isn't mine anymore. I can't walk into the bank and take it without asking them, or get it back in any other way inconsistent with the terms of my deposit account. The bank simply has a contractual obligation to pay that money, on demand, to me or to those I order paid through a check or other method. If they don't pay, I can sue them on that contract.

There is no such contractual obligation with Social Security. If Congress decided tomorrow to permanently end all Social Security payments, no one would have any cause of action to sue to get their money back.

On another point, however, the SS was setup such that even though peeps may have input 100K$, actuarially, they likely will not get it all out. So the statements put forth here of getting out what was put in is also nonsense.

Or they could get much more than they paid in. The woman who received the first Social Security payment, Ida May Fuller, "paid in" $24.75. She "got back" nearly $23,000.

You did hit on something by using the word "actuarially". Social Security has never even purported to be anything like a savings account. Its closest analogy to a legitimate financial product is an insurance contract. It's insurance against getting too old to work, and like actual insurance contracts, the "premiums" (paid here in the form of FICA taxes) are indeed "gone". It is not a checking account or a savings account - you can't withdraw money from it or borrow against it. All you get is a monthly payment if you happen to reach retirement age. That payment is determined by statute, not by the terms of any agreement you made with the government. The payment is funded by taxes from current workers, not by taxes you paid in the past.

Unfortunately, Social Security is only insurance in theory. It certainly isn't run anything like an insurance company.

Oh, ok, so although you pay local taxes (e.g., property), I guess you would not expect any return on that as well? Roads, schools, local, regional, state administration... That money is gone, too, once it leaves your hands. Come on people.

Yes, I do expect a return on that, in the form of roads, schools, etc. Once the money is spent on roads and schools, I don't expect it to be paid back to me.

By that analogy, there have already been "returns" on the FICA tax money you and I have already paid. It has already been spent on current retirees benefits. Our "return" is similar to the "return" of any other welfare program: that we don't have the elderly living in poverty (which is the situation Social Security was intended to address). When I retire, the only way I am getting money is by taxing future generations. If you are currently collecting Social Security, the only way you are getting money is by taxing me.

That is the way it has always been, from day one. Ida May Fuller wasn't "getting back" money she paid in. She was paid nearly 100 times what she paid in, and she was paid out of the taxes of others. She exhausted any pretense of getting back "her money" by the time she cashed her second benefit check.