New York Times confuses you getting money from government program with you benefiting from program

For most people over their lifetimes they get a much lower rate of return from Social Security than they would get from an private investments that they would make.  The New York Times would claim that those people benefit from Social Security simply because they got money from the program.  But if the program were cut, wouldn't it be fair to assume that the taxes that you were paying into the program would also be cut?  If both programs and the taxes for those programs were to be cut, many people getting the "benefits" of the programs would be better off.