Social Security: We Get What We Don't Pay For

The Financial Times reports that Social Security "is one of the least generous public pension systems in advanced countries." 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 U.S. citizen."

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.

Don't be fooled - the low overall income tax rate doesn't mean its low for ordinary people. As the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, our tax system is not nearly as progressive as other industrialized countries (especially with the recent Bush tax cuts), meaning taxes are crushing our middle-class. Compound that crushing tax burden with the reduction in services and our inadequate pension/Social Security system, and we've got our government waging a full scale war on America's middle class.