This is a great question someone posed. Thoughts? CAN SOMEONE WALK ME THROUGH HOW THIS MAKES SENSE By the time I retire at 67, I'll have paid roughly $540,000 into Social Security between my contributions and my employer's match. If that same money had just sat in an index fund averaging 7%, it would be worth about $2.4M. The dividends alone off that would be $168,000 a year. Instead, the government is projecting I'll get $2,950 a month at 67. That's about $35,400 a year. Someone explain the gap between those two numbers, because I genuinely don't understand where the rest of it goes.