Finally, a voice of reason!

The biggest problem I see with calculations that project what a person might accumulate if they had invested their FICA taxes in the market is that they look only at their own SS retirement annuity and none of the other SS benefits. They fail to factor in the spouse's benefit (50% of the worker's, even if the spouse never had earned income and paid $0 in FICA taxes), the surviving spouse's benefit (equal to the worker's benefit), the worker's disability benefit (equal to what their full retirement annuity would be at full retirement age) along with the benefits that would be paid for the disabled worker's family; the minor children's survivor benefits, plus disability income for them if they become disabled. Social Security does so much more than just provide a retirement annuity for the worker. If one wants to hypothesize how much income they MIGHT be able to produce if they invested their FICA taxes elsewhere, then, to be fair and accurate, they must also account for all those other benefits. Subtracting only what the worker would pay for additional disability insurance from the amount invested cuts that end figure WAAAAY down!

Social Security is not an investment account. There was never any intent to put FICA taxes in a "lock box." (That was Al Gore's campaign pitch.) Everybody pays FICA taxes at the same rate, 6.2% of earned income (with employer match), except those who earn over a certain amount - $113,700 for 2014 - do not pay FICA taxes on earned income over that amount - but they do pay Medicare tax of 1.45% on their entire earned income, with those earning over $200,000 taxed an additional .09% on the additional income).

Benefits are not tied to the amount of FICA taxes paid; they are based upon one's highest 35 years of income, indexed for inflation and averaged out into a monthly income amount. Monthly SS benefits are calculated at 90% of the first $816 of average monthly income, plus 32% of the next $4,101 of average monthly income, plus 15% of average monthly income over $4,917. Skewed very much in favor of lower-income workers.

Most of the criticisms about Social Security are all political hype. It's on good footing for the next 20 years or so, and with only minor tweaks, such as increasing the full retirement age from 66 to 67 or 68 (appropriate given longer life expectancies, I think), or increasing the income cap by a modest amount, will keep it viable indefinitely.

ok lets get things in order they have been steeling our SS since the mid 60's some where between 2.5-4.0 trillion in IOU"s//yep it sounds like a Liberal pol-cat got into our hard ereaned money which all of us who are 60 an beyound an this doesn't even count the interest that is owed to SS an now the dog liberal wants to do away with it an start his MYRA BS program so they can steel more money this is not right he stole 150 million out of medicare already for his so called BS health care program so how long will it take or what will it take for the rest of the brainwashed/braindead liberals in this country to wake up an get ragehead/obama dog an the rest of his liberal dogs out of office/goverment an put in good conservatives,an i don't mean republicans there are to many that say they are conservatives but in truth they are nothing but liberals in conservative sheep skins.An god help us if hillery gets in.