Looking at this insane world of capitalism, you become accustomed to its many contradictions. For example, if you live in a rich country you would imagine that you would be better treated financially than if you lived in a poorer country. Well not so if you happen to be a pensioner.
If we take the 10 largest economies in the world, US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and look at how they treat their pensioners we get some strange results. If we take pensions as a percentage of the average wage, we find that all the richest economies with the exception of Canada, are at the bottom end of that table, with the poorer countries paying their pensioners a higher percentage of average wages. The two largest economies find themselves at the very bottom of the league, with the US paying its pensioners a miserable 17.3% of the average wage, while its main competitor China, paying a paltry 2.0%. The UK, fifth in the league of large economies, finds itself in the bottom half of the pension league, with a derisory 21.6% of average wage, almost half that of the poorer New Zealand, whose pensioners receive 40.1%. of the average wage.
Of course it is not just in pensions that we find this inequality and injustice, the system of capitalist economics is built on such inequality, it's how the system functions. Wealth is created by the vast majority of the people, but the wealth then flows up towards a small cabal of parasites, who surround themselves with opulence beyond our imagination. To maintain that life in the cocoon of unearned wealth, the parasites have to continually plunder the wealth produced by us the ordinary people. Hence the cuts in our standard of living, education, health care, and all social services. The differences in our conditions at the bottom of this insane system is brought about by the majority having to fight individual battles to gain some of the inadequate crumbs left by the parasites, creating different strata of poor and poorer. The system is not based on logic, rationalism or compassion, but on the control of all the means of production and distribution, and that, for the moment, is firmly in the hands of the parasites. So it will continue until we decide that we have had enough of this plundering of the produce of our labour, and we take control of those means of production and distribution.
New Zealand 40.1%
Denmark 36.3%
Ireland 33.0%
Canada 32.2%
Netherlands 27.1%
Australia 27.1%
France 25.6%
Sweden 23.2%
UK 21.6%
Japan 20.1%
Spain 19.6%
Italy 19.1%
Germany 19.0%
US 17.3%
Turkey 6.0%
China 2.0%
