No, that's the original marketing but the payments you get out of it aren't related to the ones you put into it i.e. they're just a tax to fund the program.
When I’ll retire (will never happen at this rate) I’ll get a pension that’s based on how much I contributed but the money will come from people who will still be working.
That's from https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html - so generally, the old were financed by the younger at inception, and that's basically continued ever since. Nobody funded their own SSN fully between 1937 and 1940.
That sort of insurance is still a good idea.
The "house" part of the person you're replying to's post is interesting: "Giving old people money for free when their 10x more valuable houses inflate the market"
By definition, anyone whose house is 10x more valuable than it was when they bought it is not inflating the market. The people buying at the new price are the ones driving the current valuation of that house.
But constrained supply does also come into play; and other forms of social assistance are conditional on income levels and such; it wouldn't be totally unreasonable or unprecedented to make some benefits conditional on assets in cases like that - if you're sitting on a 900k asset, maybe leverage that first if you don't otherwise have any savings? And in doing so, open up that spot for a younger generation that still has to commute, etc?
Also, it might be the relative value of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar#Value
The $30,000 paid for a 1960 house would be worth $223,000 50 years later in 2010.
uh, didn't the old people finance their own social security? Didn't they give up money their whole lives to finance their homes? Don't they contribute to society in other less-measurable ways?
That said, there could be some ways to retire, but be able to work in such a way that retirement is not adversely affected. Some of my friends who retired had to carefully not work or social security was adversely affected.