Probably so, but that suggests you are speaking more of RE-education than education, with all THAT suggests.

Meanwhile, malpractice insurance remains compulsory for US doctors, whether or not they ever file a claim, just as SS is compulsory for all US workers whether or not they ever collect. Neither gets their money back if they never file a claim or receive benefits. The one exception might be doctors getting a refund if they never have a claim, but by your own admission that would cost them money anyway, so no sane person would advocate SS do the same.

One cannot argue with results. Except apparently some can, and miss the days when the majority of American and European elderly died in miserable, starving and disabled poverty, after which most of their few remaining assets (if any) went to creditors rather than their children. Is that what the GOP means by "repeal inheritance tax"? Because if everyone dies broke there is nothing to tax?

Payment is uncapped; the only cap is on the payment each MONTH, every month, to age 90 or 190. If we must speak in misleadingly oversimplified terms, fine, but be consistent. The inescapabable problem into which Ponzis fall is that beneficiaries ultimately exceed contributors, which can never happen to Social Security, so it is no Ponzi—unless you contend there will eventually be more Americans >65 than <65, in which case you may want to consider a career for which you are better suited. That is why removing the witholding cap would most definitely make SS solvent; we need only look at its balance spring and summer INCREASES despite the contributor/beneficairy ratio (again, 2.73, not 2) to see that.

It is very VERY simple math, so I trust you will have no difficulty with it; for the sake of (your) argument I will use moondogs 6.2% witholding figure rather than your more "sustaining" but less accurate 7.5%:

2.73 (contributors/beneficiaries)X0.124 (witholding from employees and employers/self-employed)X$32,000 (2012 US median income)~$11,000/beneficiary.

So if we JUST removed the witholding cap (without changing benefits) we could pay every beneficiary $11,000/year, $916.66/month, AND NOT LOSE A DIME. In fact, we would have roughly $550,000 extra; I purposely rounded 916.66... down because preserving benefits trumps maximizing them. Above that number SS operates at a loss; below it SS is sustainable. I believe the figure you quoted for current average benefit was a little over 2/3 that sustainable one. We can use your 7.5% witholding figure if you prefer; that just increases the sustainable amount per beneficiary by 2.6%.

We can also determine the amount per beneficiary SS can sustainably pay through 2060 (the limit of reliable current population progjections.) Just substitute 1.99 (the lowest contributor/beneficiary ratio, in 2060) for 2.73:

1.99X0.124X32,000~$8000/year, or $666.66/month, or an even $700/month if we use your 7.5% witholding figure. Either is quite sustainable even though the projected 2060 contributor/beneficiary ratio is <2.

In other words, removing the witholding limit would make SS indefinitely sustainable even if we did nothing else, which, IIRC, IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID.

We need not remove the witholding cap to get there, but that is probably more politically practical than either means testing or capping the monthly benefits at a smaller number that takes into account the fact no one pays a cent more than $7049.40 (6.2% of $113,700, the 2013 witholding cap) and most people pay considerably less. We can fiddle with witholding and/or benefit limits all sorts of ways to ensure higher sustainable benefits, but one thing the above math should make blindingly obvious to anyone with the mathematical acumen you claim is that Social Security is in no sense unsustainable. At this point, claiming otherwise can no longer be excused by possible ignorance, only condemned as deliberate dishonesty.