A while back I did the math on if Social Security did work by just taking my contributions and investing them on my behalf what shape would my account be in now.
What I found is that if they took my contributions and my employer's contributions on my behalf each month and put them into one year T-bills, with maturing bills rolled over into new one year T-bills, if I retired now (a couple years before my full retirement age) there would be enough to pay out something like 90-95% of my monthly benefit for the rest of my expected lifetime.
I didn't try to find the actual amounts of contributions for each month. I just took that total for the year and assumed it was spread equally across all 12 months. For T-bill rates I used the rate from the last day of the month.
I did a similar calculation for Medicare. With the same kind of setup my Medicare account would have had enough when I turned 65 to pay the unsubsidized monthly premium for a good marketplace plan on my state's ACA marketplace for the rest of my expected lifetime.
This suggests that a system that works like they say 1 in 4 thinks it works could be viable. Make it so if someone dies before their account runs out the remainder is used to pay people who have lived longer than their expected lifetimes.
What I found is that if they took my contributions and my employer's contributions on my behalf each month and put them into one year T-bills, with maturing bills rolled over into new one year T-bills, if I retired now (a couple years before my full retirement age) there would be enough to pay out something like 90-95% of my monthly benefit for the rest of my expected lifetime.
I didn't try to find the actual amounts of contributions for each month. I just took that total for the year and assumed it was spread equally across all 12 months. For T-bill rates I used the rate from the last day of the month.
I did a similar calculation for Medicare. With the same kind of setup my Medicare account would have had enough when I turned 65 to pay the unsubsidized monthly premium for a good marketplace plan on my state's ACA marketplace for the rest of my expected lifetime.
This suggests that a system that works like they say 1 in 4 thinks it works could be viable. Make it so if someone dies before their account runs out the remainder is used to pay people who have lived longer than their expected lifetimes.