Millennials and RVs

Again, this is an incorrect perspective. When figuring investment returns you can only use "no risk" such as bank CDs to have comparable security. Before you could invest the amount of your FICA taxes each year you would have to deduct the cost of comparable disability and survivors insurance. In a nutshell, you would be "investing" much less at lower returns than you might imagine. There are other similar gotchas as winnietrey has pointed out. This is not new, people have had these misconceptions since the program started. Show some math that gets you to an age 120 "break even" and someone will undoubtedly be able to show you where you went wrong. Since we didn't have a choice as to whether we contributed or not, you'd think folks would be happy to learn that it turned out well.