I chose the average on purpuse, to do just that. Poor people pay less, and are "subsidized" by the rich, who pay more, but an average person should get as much as they paid in.
Considering that some people die young (before they retire), an average person should get even more than they paid into the system, because the heirs of the dead usually don't get the dead persons pension (with some exceptions, eg. underage kids)
The L(osses) ... the pension/social/levy system - no matter which country we're looking at - appears to have been hijacked by an ever growing parasitic group of financial institutions that milk whatever they can into their private pockets (and their shareholders').
Every penny in fees they receive for "working out" specialized retirement plans is in a way a L(oss) for society. Why? Because no matter what ingenious system a state devises, it all comes back to the fact that the current working/healthy part of the population has to provide for tho elderly and the sick and whoever can't provide for themselves. Every kind of juggling around with the money adding unnecessary steps in between is just milking the system for private gains.
I don't know you but I never, ever, had the impression I'd get what I paid into any social security system. Neither here in Sweden or even less in Brazil. My salary is just too high compared to the median so I never had the thought that everything I paid into I'd get back as benefits.
And to me, that's ok. I earn quite above the average, I don't mind that I can help fund some part of society with my work if this society is functional and well managed, so in Sweden I'm perfectly fine with this arrangement. In Brazil it was the complete opposite, even though I don't care about paying taxes, I do care about taxes always being stolen by a multitude of corrupt actors in Brazil.