It’s not a matter of getting back what you put in, but to be able to not worry about supporting your basic needs in the last part of life. That many have paid into the system their entire working life and it isn’t enough without some extra supplement suggests it’s not working well enough.
Ok, I see what you’re saying now. Yes, 100%, we should take care of everyone’s basic needs as a society and that’s far from working. I think where my (in retrospect, very poorly worded) original post came from is that people think that is works like a bank and that the intent is that you just withdraw it later like tax-free savings and then are surprised to learn that the math includes accounting for people dying off before they can collect benefits. I think people should know that they are paying into a pool and by design “their money” is being paid out to other people, and that it is on the whole a good thing.
It’s not a matter of getting back what you put in, but to be able to not worry about supporting your basic needs in the last part of life. That many have paid into the system their entire working life and it isn’t enough without some extra supplement suggests it’s not working well enough.
Ok, I see what you’re saying now. Yes, 100%, we should take care of everyone’s basic needs as a society and that’s far from working. I think where my (in retrospect, very poorly worded) original post came from is that people think that is works like a bank and that the intent is that you just withdraw it later like tax-free savings and then are surprised to learn that the math includes accounting for people dying off before they can collect benefits. I think people should know that they are paying into a pool and by design “their money” is being paid out to other people, and that it is on the whole a good thing.