Supercharged Social Security
IRAs & 401(k)s can invest.Social Security should invest too.ASAP!
YOU would be MUCH better off if Supercharged Social Security had invested wisely for YOU at your birth, utilizing growth like this:
Why invest?
No. R-084
Invested at birth for retired U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (born 8/35)
$1
August 1935
All from $1 in large U.S. stocks, dividends reinvested. Without reinvestment? About $609.
August 1935, the month Social Security became law, to January 2026
Where would YOU be if lawmakers had created Supercharged Social Security long ago?
Our chart showed you Supercharged Social Security would have been great for Ron Paul. But what could Supercharged Social Security have done for YOU? Use our Calculator to find out. And save your cost and growth amounts to compare with FICA next.
If you used our Calculator, you should have seen that Supercharged Social Security could turn a small amount of money into a much larger amount. Now compare the Supercharged Social Security cost with your own FICA tax cost and expected benefits. You can find them at:
“Your Social Security Statement” (from ssa.gov)
To see your Statement, enter https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ into a browser and sign in. Don’t have an account? You can create one there. Then sign in and download your statement.
If you’re retired, at the bottom of your Statement you’ll find:
Taxes Paid
Total estimated Social Security and Medicare taxes paid over your working career based on your Earnings Record:
Social Security taxes
You paid: $ amount
Employer(s): $ amount
Medicare taxes
You paid: $ amount
Employer(s): $ amount
Compare the Calculator’s “Contribution” amount with what Social Security has cost you and your employers. If you did it right, you’ll find that the Supercharged Social Security cost is very tiny compared to a Social Security tax that’s huge in comparison.
For example, the default Calculator numbers were:
- Start month – Jan 1975
- Minimum required cost – $951
- Claim age – 67
- My claim date – Jan. 2042
- What $951 at the start would have become – $1,474,528
Your Social Security Statement hides valuable information it should reveal. For example, FICA tax you paid, by year. If you had that, you could plug the number for the first year into our Calculator to see what it could have been worth years later with Supercharged Social Security.
Yes, MUCH better off! Supercharged Social Security would replace your expensive but weak benefits from pay-as-you-go funding2 & no-growth government bonds victimized by inflation. Instead, YOU would have super-cheap yet strong benefits from a professionally-managed, high-growth stock-market index (a Total stock Market Index (TMI) that owns a slice of virtually every company in the market) held ultra-long term in a pooled Supercharged Social Security Trust Fund.
But that was “The Road Not Taken.”
Stock-market history shows fixing legacy system flaws with Supercharged Social Security could GUARANTEE great future benefits!
But without a good fix, you can expect a permanent benefit cut around 2033. Retirees would get only about 81 cents of every scheduled dollar.3 If lawmakers don’t implement Supercharged Social Security ASAP, don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Prefer to check our math first? Run your birth month →
What is Supercharged Social Security?
Supercharged Social Security is an “investment vehicle.” We designed it to travel “the road not taken” by legacy Social Security. It would bypass “the road taken,” a bumpy toll road Social Security put us on in 1935, and make the journey to secure retirement much cheaper and more beneficial for all.
What does the “supercharge” metaphor mean?
How would Supercharged Social Security “supercharge” Social Security?
It would replace weak, high-cost retirement benefits with super-strong benefits at ultra-low cost. It would pool future retirees’ money, invest ASAP in a stock-market index, reinvest dividends, hold “forever” (as Warren Buffett says), and pay strong benefits from high-growth assets.
Where did the Supercharged Social Security idea come from?
Ironically, from wrong information. I got my first paycheck at age 16. A fellow part-timer said “Social Security will invest that payroll deduction in the stock market.” My library research showed investment in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have been good for my folks. My coworker’s facts were wrong, but his idea of investing in the market was good. His bad info produced a “seed” that I tucked away for decades. In 1996, I discovered my calling and nourished the seed. I left the retirement industry to create Supercharged Social Security.
Where did the ingredients for the Supercharged Social Security recipe come from?
Here are just a few of the more important ideas from some very wise people. I added a few:
Supercharged Social Security – a very brief introduction
Our message? Simple: Today’s Social Security (the “legacy” system) is dysfunctional. For decades, it has had us plodding toward an early 2030s benefit cut to about 81 cents of every scheduled dollar. But with Supercharged Social Security Social Security, YOU could have been SOARING toward poverty-free retirement at your birth. And for some of us, SOARING toward “Social Security millionaire” status. This website will show you how Supercharged Social Security could keep those AMAZING promises. But first, Congress must act.
01 · The vision
Amend it how? Supercharged Social Security development began in 1996 based on an idea similar to what John Bogle described in 2000: an Supercharged Social Security-like plan that could fix Social Security’s flaws.
His idea:
A “government-sponsored retirement/investment fund that would be managed by an independent Social Security Retirement Board made up of ‘appointed figures of unquestioned integrity and financial acumen.’ The board would select the stock holdings of the fund, which would track the performance of the entire stock market. And, naturally, (Social Security) would be charged razor-thin management fees.... If the market returns 10%, (its beneficiaries) will get 10%.’”
What could YOU expect from Supercharged Social Security?
Expect exactly what SHOULD have happened if Supercharged Social Security Social Security had begun in 1935. We’ve described it as “The Road Not Taken.” Younger workers, and Americans born 1935 and after, would have become “instant capitalists.” Social Security would have owned for them a slice of corporate America. That would have put them on the road to well-above-poverty-level retirement income. Some even becoming “Social Security millionaires”! Older workers would have had legacy system benefits.
History now shows us NON-PRIVATIZED4 Supercharged Social Security Social Security stock-market investment would have been virtually riskless! That’s because Supercharged Social Security investment would have been ultra-long-term. Begun in 1935, both FICA5 for retirement and elder poverty would have shrunk steadily, vanishing completely by the late 1990s! Collectively, trillions of dollars from FICA phase-out could have poured into workers wallets, Wall Street’s IRAs, 401(k)s, etc., and the wider economy.
Politicians, fear not. Workers who want more than 2x poverty income would still want 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. With FICA phase out, trillions of dollars more money could have gone into such plans. As a result, Wall Street’s donations would have increased, not shrunk. Elected reps and their constituents would have gotten far more out of Social Security than paid in.
But that was “The Road Not Taken.”
So why wait? Let’s get on that road NOW! Supercharged Social Security Social Security would pay off in four ways:
- A win for YOU and/or your familyNO FICA & stronger benefits, funded at birth for ALL newborns
- A win for Your representativesa fix voters could actually benefit from
- A win for Wall Streetwith FICA phase-out, trillions flowing in
- A win for Our economygrowth in savings, investment & consumption
A win-win-win-win.
02 · An example from history
An example from history shows how Supercharged Social Security could have “Supercharged” retired U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s Social Security benefits – dirt cheap!
We chose Ron because he was born 8/20/1935, the month Social Security began, and because he’s still collecting benefits. Table 1 shows the enormous power of Supercharged Social Security Social Security – “the Road Not Taken” – step by step.
03 · The fix
A pooled Supercharged Social Security Social Security Trust Fund, invested the time-proven way, accumulating assets to pay YOUR benefits!
The Supercharged Social Security Social Security plan summarized: it will fund benefits early, inside a new Supercharged Social Security Social Security Trust Fund, invest in a Total stock Market Index (TMI) at low index-fund cost, manage it professionally, with no privatized or individually managed accounts. And no risk of a benefit cut like the legacy system may foist on us around 2033.
What Supercharged Social Security IS:
- TMI investment held in a pooled Supercharged Social Security Social Security trust fund
- YOUR money professionally managed
- A slice of the total U.S. stock market working for YOU
- Still a defined benefit plan (a promised monthly check for life) – still your pension.
What Supercharged Social Security is NOT:
- Not weak benefits at exorbitant cost
- Not privatization
- Not individually managed accounts
- Not stock-picking by amateurs
- Not future cuts to YOUR benefits.
04 · Prove it to yourself
How much could $1.00 at-birth have grown to minimum retirement age (62)?
05 · Wall Street’s best-kept secrets
The “Doubling Principle” is simple: a broad stock-market index held “forever” will keep doubling “forever.”
Supercharged Social Security would benefit from this principle. And dividend compounding would accelerate the doubling. This principle explains why Warren Buffett said wise investors should buy & then hold “forever.”
“Reversion to the Mean” is the engine that drives the “Doubling Principle”
Want to see more evidence?
| Total return (dividends reinvested)$1.00 grew to | $1.06 millionfrom 1871 to 2026 |
|---|---|
| Without reinvestment$1.00 became | $1,700over the same 155 years |
| Percent of total return from reinvestment | more than 99.8% |
Had Social Security’s founders conducted a Congressional investigation into what wise investment could do for retirees before they created Social Security, they could have made YOUR retirement benefits strong but cheap compared to the dysfunctional scheme they foisted on you.
06 · The hard questions
Questions raised by skeptics.
Won’t politicians raid the Supercharged Social Security Trust Fund?
Because we recognized Congress’s record has been poor, we designed Supercharged Social Security Social Security to be “arm’s-length” and governed by a board like the one John Bogle suggested (i.e., politically independent, like the Federal Reserve). Politicians were afraid of messing with the proverbial “third rail.” But threatening your Supercharged Social Security benefits would be even more risky for incumbents.
Wouldn’t Supercharged Social Security privatize Social Security?
No. With privatization, YOU would make investment decisions & transactions. With Supercharged Social Security, Social Security’s Supercharged Social Security Trust Fund would do that for you. In fact, our Supercharged Social Security design was supported by a study by John Bogle from the Financial Analysts Journal, January/February 2005. Described elsewhere in this website, it showed privatization would make the vast majority of retirement investors much worse off than with a plan like Supercharged Social Security.
Wouldn’t it take a long time for Supercharged Social Security to become fully phased in?
Yes. Full phase in would take about six decades. But Supercharged Social Security would fix a problem that’s been growing for NINE decades, and it’s likely to cause a big benefit cut before Social Security is ten decades old. But if you have seen any proposal that would have cost YOU less, AND provided YOU with more benefits for every dollar of cost, and made every newborn American (and eventually ALL Americans) eligible for benefits at retirement age, I want to hear about it.
It’s long past time to take “The Road Not Taken.”
Could YOU have been a “Social Security millionaire”? See our tables.
We ask you for no donations. But we would like YOU to ask lawmakers to do what's best for YOU, other constituents, themselves, Wall Street, and our economy.
An American program, funded the American way – by the people it belongs to.
Notes
The fine print, in one place.
- How the growth of $1 was estimated. Robert Shiller’s public data prices each month as the average of its daily closes. On it, $1 in large U.S. stocks with dividends reinvested grew to $13,634 from August 1935 to January 2026. My own SBBI® month-end series, with Yahoo Finance after 2022, puts the same dollar at about $14,200 by December 2025, about 5% higher. The two series measure the month differently; see note 6. The chart’s dates are months, not days, for the same reason. Ron Paul was born in August 1935, so the line is his dollar from birth. ↩
- Pay-as-you-go funding: today’s workers’ taxes pay today’s retirees. Nothing is saved up to grow. ↩
- A cut, not a stop. The 81 cents is the combined retirement and disability funds after their reserves run low (2034 combined). Counting the retirement fund alone, about 77 cents of every scheduled dollar would still be paid after 2033. ↩
- NON-PRIVATIZED means no individual accounts. One pooled Supercharged Social Security Trust Fund would invest for everyone, professionally managed. See NOT Privatization. ↩
- FICA is the Social Security tax taken out of every paycheck. ↩
- How Table 1 was estimated. The figures in Table 1 are mine. They come from the SBBI® S&P 500 total-return series, which prices each month at its last trading day. My calculator uses Robert Shiller’s public data instead, which prices each month as the average of its daily closes. On that data the same $250 grows to $276,314 by August 1997, about 4% less than my $287,338, and $1 grows to $1,105 instead of $1,149. Neither is wrong; the two series simply measure the month differently. For a birth month at a market bottom, like March 1938, the gap can reach 25%. Run Ron’s birth month yourself → · How my numbers work → ↩
- On Shiller’s public data the same three months give $350, $1,743 and $739; see note 6 for why the two series differ. A hypothetical illustration of mathematical principles, not a projection of your benefit. ↩
- Table 2 is my own table. Data sources: Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation® (SBBI®) thru 2022, and Yahoo Finance thereafter. Based on annualized total returns for the S&P 500 Index beginning 1925, and for a comparable index for 1814-1924. In this website, we use the S&P 500 Index as a proxy for a Total Market Index (TMI). The public data my calculator uses starts in 1871; its 1871 to 2026 rolling windows are on Analysis. ↩
- Chart source: Robert J. Shiller dataset (shillerdata.com), pinned snapshot 2026-08-06. January values, dividends reinvested. R-038. ↩
- On Robert Shiller’s public data: 455-fold, February 1947 to February 2009. ↩