Social Security - "least generous"

(from the financial times)

US Social Security is one of the least generous public pension systems in advanced countries, providing an employee on average earnings a pension after tax of 51 per cent of pre-retirement income, a comparative study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows.

The average employee in an advanced country can expect a government pension of 70 per cent of his or her after-tax earnings at retirement compared with 39 per cent for an equivalent US citizen.

(more: david sirota offers some thoughtful comments)

There are a lot of reasons for this disparity - but the biggest is clearly that while our government is happy taxing the middle-class, it refuses to adequately tax the wealthy and large corporations, and then claims budget deficits mean we don't have enough money to shore up Social Security. As Citizens for Tax Justice notes, America has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that most U.S. corporations paid absolutely no tax during the 1990s, often using shady tax loopholes to dodge their responsibilities. The U.S. also has one of the lowest income tax rates in the world (and our President recently signaled he's not even interested in making the wealthy pay their fair share). That's quite a distinction: usually an industrialized country has low taxes in one area or the other - not both.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet