I don’t know offhand, and it’s not important to me to do the research today. However, if you try to calculate the present value of future benefits for past contributions only, you get a big fat error because math doesn’t work that way.
It sounds like it’s important to you to prove that programs that lift seniors out of poverty are bad and doomed and useless. In fact, while opponents like to wail about how Social Security is on the brink of bankruptcy, the actual situation is that if nothing changes, the system will be forced to cut benefits by about 30%, forty years from now. Again, if nothing changes. I am willing to bet my retirement that in the next 40 years (actually more like 15 for me) a government will be elected that will adjust things to prevent even that rather mild crisis.
