Note the lack of the word “retirement” in “social security”. It’s a safety net, not a retirement account. Says so right on the tin.

EDIT: and before anyone else gets an itchy downvote finger, go look it up. Here, I’ll quote from the SSA’s own page: “Based on social insurance principles, the program provides monthly benefits designed to replace, in part, the loss of income due to retirement, disability, or death.” (emphasis mine). It’s so the old and disabled don’t starve in the streets, not a retirement plan.

Absolutely! Social security was designed to help the elderly avoid being desperately poor. And has succeeded at that to a large extent. But a full fledged retirement program it is not.

The average monthly payment as of Jan 2017 is ~$1400/month: https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3736/Wha...

Depending on your cost of living that may help (maybe a little, maybe a lot) but it's not typically going to be a replacement for your own savings.

$1400 a month is the average.

I can start collecting that amount at 67, and will statistically die at 78.

So 11 years of benefits is $185k.

Meanwhile, if I make an average of $100k for just 12 years, then I will have paid that much into the system (15% contribution). And that's not even counting the massive amount of compounding that will have occurred as I've been contributing since I was 14 years old.

I know it's quite popular for the HN crowd to talk about raising taxes for things like universal health care, social programs, etc.

But when I actually do the numbers and look at how I'm already paying about 1/3 of my income to taxes, I'm beginning to see why many conservatives don't trust the government to be fair stewards of our money.

But if you pay more, you also get out more. Not as much, since SS is redistributive, but certainly more than average.

"The significance of the new social insurance program was that it sought to address the long-range problem of economic security for the aged through a contributory system in which the workers themselves contributed to their own future retirement benefit by making regular payments into a joint fund."

from the SSA's own web site -- https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

The key point is that one's benefits are tied to one's individual contributions.