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In this case, it's actually not hair-splitting; see my reply to your comment's sibling. You both demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how Social Security works.

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I may well misunderstand how Social Security works. However, the point of my comment is that it's hardly the only system to which one might contribute funds, incurring some future obligation of (re)payment on the part of that system, which is later discharged using funds that were most recently in "someone else's pocket".

Either it's a trivial point that applies pretty broadly outside of SS, or you meant something more significant and I'm interested in knowing what that is.

Your misunderstanding is, at least in part, in thinking that contributing to SS incurs an obligation to you on the part of the program. Technically, it doesn't even have an obligation to current recipients, let alone future ones.

It doesn't matter though. If social security were made of your actual money the end result would still be the same -- your money would go towards investments in the past, and you'd get paid back by people benefiting from those investments.

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