Dec 16, 2013

U.S. Social Security Benefits Are Low By World Standards


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can afford more generous benefits when the US is footing the bill for your defense. High on the list? Spain and Greece.

Justin

Anonymous said...

We don't pay in very much here in America.

Anonymous said...

This would only be useful if it was corrected to reflect the amount we are taxed.

For example, the highest marginal tax rate in the Netherlands is around 53%, while is is about 39.5% in the USA.

Anonymous said...

to piggyback on 3:24

Let's also get a chart showing the number of applications and percentage of working-age population applying for and receiving these benefits by country. I wonder if many of the countries with high payment amounts have the HUGE percentage (despite having a similar post-WWII baby boom--care to explain that?) of working age adults applying for and receiving disability benefits that we here in the U S of A do.

I also wonder how many of these industrialized countries have a looser standard of disability (i.e., I am aware that some western european countries find one disabled if one cannot do the work he trained to do--a much lower bar), indicating that, all other things being equal, they should have higher rates of applications/receipts of disability.

tl;dnr: as 3:24 started to show us, we need much more data on various aspects of this issue before anyone can assert anything of substance with accuracy.

Anonymous said...

9:21 here again

Let this be a lesson to us all. One chart, one set of data--anything can seem sensational or seem to imply something that, if you dig a little deeper, isn't really proven at all. We should all strive for more data to inform our decision making.