I start a federal bank that pays 1% APR, very crappy rate, and I stick $1000 in when I'm 18 and come back at 65 it's got $1600 in there, 60% profit - for me, not them - presumably they made some loaning that money out in the meantime. This is the notion around savings, and a better rate like 3% would give me $4000, 300% profit... for me, not them. Just make sure you're tracking on this notion.

Now, a fairly obvious, and frankly 'oh duh' reason why SS brings in more money then it spends out each year, thus far, is that the people collecting it now were all born prior to 1948 - when the population was less than half the current number. Ignoring inflation and interest, every buck they pay out they should be getting about two bucks in. Kinda hard to run in the red any sort of pension or savings plan where your customer pool has been increasing every year. I'm not sure why you'd expect any of us to applaud SS bringing in more money each year than it pays out - thus far - when you would literally need to do worse than nothing to achieve that. Any given year in which the number of people 18-65 outnumber the number of people 65+ that SS doesn't bring in more than it shells out would represent an epic disaster of mismanagement nearly worthing of mass public hangings.

I've no idea why you would consider that a good bar for SS to be held to. The proper standard is to compare the average cash inputted by a recipient to the average amount received, adjusting for inflation/interest accrued and if the average person is pulling more out then they put in, then it is in the red. Looking at the raw balance in the account or incoming/outgoing is just absurd.