Social Insecurity

An interesting discussion with Mrs. Z on our evening walk (wanshan sanbo). In case you were wondering, we still take a walk almost every evening, usually about an hour or so after finishing dinner, the three of us, usually on the same route. Sometimes Mrs. Z quizzes me on my Chinese and sometimes I try to exchange words with Mr. Z but often Mrs. Z and I just lapse into English conversation because that is the easiest thing to do. Usually it is nothing very interesting, just the details of the day, but today she started out by asking me about "the American welfare system." She said she had never asked anyone about this and so I tried to explain it as best as I could. You realize it is all quite complicated, of course. I explained that the term "welfare" usually refers to aid given to poor families, especially familes (often single mothers) with young children. I also explained that this was overhauled ten years ago so that there must now be a transition made to work.

But it turns out what she really wanted to ask about was how much the government gives those who retire. Mr. Z is retired and Mrs. Z is looking at retiring soon (as an interesting side note, there are mandatory retirement ages here, I think 55 for woman 60 for men but I could be mistaken so don't quote me on that. This is necessary in part I gather because of the large labor force. There is another interesting discussion to be had on conceptions of retirement). Anyway, it seems that when one retires here one in essence gets one's full salary that one had before retirement, and that one can continue to live in essentially the same manner one has before retiring. I explained to her that this was not the case in the U.S. and that one really could not afford to live on one's Social Security (another term that had to be explained) and that most people I knew were saving for their retirement and not counting all that much on their government income.

Mrs. Z did not seem to care too much for the U.S. system. I think it points to some interesting differences in worldviews and might be a good topic for the American part of the American and British culture class.