Many state pensions were/are based on employe AND government contributions per each pay check.. What many states did was decide not to contribute their promised share with real money & replaced that with IOUs, which means future taxpayers hold the bag. Not exactly the same, but our Fed government took the huge baby boomer surplus in the SS trust fund, spent it, and replaced OUR money with IOUs.
“....replaced OUR money ....”
It was never your money!
That money you paid in went out the door to pay the benefits of those retired when you were working. As long as the is a high worker to beneficiary ration the system sort of works (1940 there were 159.4 workers paying into the system for every beneficiary receiving. As of 2013 there were 2.8 payers to those receiving! It’s a Ponzi Scheme!
As far as it being your money, there have been several federal court decisions (Two USSC!) that say you have no property rights in the money. If you did you could count it as part of your estate and leave it to your heirs. You can’t!
You can also take out far more then you put in! The USG didn’t count on people living as long as they do now. For example, the first one to get a SS check - Ida Mae Fuller paid $24.75 into the system but collected in retirement a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.
There have been 10s if not 100s of thousands of Ida Mae Fullers!
For those who don’t believe me here are the SSA & Wiki links.
worker to beneficiary ratios
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html
Ida May Fuller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_May_Fuller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_May_Fuller#cite_note-Contributions-15
https://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html
Property Rights & Social Security - Is it Yours?
It has long been law that
there is no legal right to Social Security. In two
important cases, Helvering v. Davis and
Flemming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that Social Security taxes are simply taxes
and convey no property or contractual rights to
Social Security benefits.
It’s both, what you wrote and what I wrote.