Childless people are getting the best deal of anyone. They get new social security payers with a better invested upbringing, all for paying out a pittance and offloading most of the cost onto parents -- all the meanwhile having their social security payout almost completely untied to making the investments needed to get their payment.

Childless people basically get their cake and eat it too under the social welfare scheme of most western countries, getting the benefits of children without having to deal with much of the drawbacks.

The idea is that social security is fundamentally on a path to running out of money and resembles a pyramid scheme. The young are paying into benefits for people older than them. So the childless people are being “taken care of” by others’ kids is the argument, I think.

You don't pay "into" social security. You pay up. The people you paid are dead and won't be returning your money. Yours will be funded by now-children. That investment lies by far on parents, with some pittances paid into property taxes for schools or low-income welfare programs.

Irrespective of how it technically works, the fairness principle is "you paid in therefore you are paid out". Childless people aren't getting a better or worse deal than anyone else.

But you are missing the inputs.

Social security requires two inputs

1) "Paying in"

2) Raising up the next generation to pay it back out.

Without both, the entire system collapses and goes insolvent.

If I do (1) but barely do (2) I am subsidized by the people that do both (1) and (2), if my payout isn't linked to (2).

The genius of social security argument about the childless "paying in" is they rightly identify their pay out is fairly proportional to (1) but nearly completely decoupled to (2). Thus it poses an argument on the surface that makes sense but is actually incredibly false.

As long as population holds constant, it doesn't matter who does/doesn't have kids. Some people have more, some people have fewer, some people immigrate. It all works out in the end.

Childless people pay into the system like everyone else. They aren't freeloaders.

As a parent myself I find this kind of savior complex incredibly embarrassing. We have kids, great. I'm glad our government offers tax benefits, services, and an immigration process to encourage population stability. But let's not pretend we're Atlas holding the nation on our shoulders.

Why do you expect the population to hold constant? That unsupported assumption is what you base everything on.

Furthermore, if the population stays the same but ages, there will be major ramifications to SS.

Furthermore, if the population remains constant but fewer and fewer people have children, then those who do have children bear more and more of the burden of providing for everybody else’s retirement. Responding with “so what, SS will cover me whether I have children or not” is kind of missing the point. And leads straight back to the first point. In a world that requires people to have a substantial number of children to survive (like our world with SS), economically disadvantaging people who prioritize having children is a huge risk.

The US keeps makes up for its reproduction rate with immigration. It ends up being roughly constant.

Nobody is economically disadvantaging people with kids. The question at hand is how much we as a society are choosing to advantage them with tax benefits and social services. Including free education! Having kids is pretty great.