Germany is known for excellent social security benefits for its residents. When I lived there, these were the benefits I got:
- Rentenversicherung aka Pension Insurance
- Arbeitloesenversicherung aka Unemployment Insurance
- Krankenversicherung aka Health Insurance
- Pflegeversicherung aka Care Insurance
I got none of these benefits for free or in return for paying income tax. I had to pay for all of them separately via payroll deductions, and my employer made matching contributions. The only benefits that came without any payment were free education at government schools and Kindergeld aka Child Cash. Income is taxed from 0.3X per capita income, so a vast majority of the population pays income tax. In addition, everyone pays VAT (Mehrwertsteuer).
According to popular narrative, India does not have any social security. However, the state provides many benefits to citizens in India, even if they’re not called social security:
- Free healthcare without paying income tax or health insurance
- Free education without paying income tax
- Free food for over 55% of the population (900M people) without paying income tax
- No income tax for over 90% of the population (since income tax exemption is 3X of per capita income)
- Paid pension via Employee Provident Fund
As for quality and other parameters of delivery of social security, see the following:
- Health Insurance, Not Price Control, Is The Solution
- Comparison Of Healthcare & Health Insurance Across Different Countries
- Indian Education System Is The Best … For India!
- Assorted tweets on social security
tl;dr: India has the best price-performance of social security of any major economy. And quality is not too bad, either.
On a side note, some Indians demand more public services by claiming that all Indians pay GST. They totally miss that everybody pays indirect tax even in the West and >60% pay income tax there unlike 4% in India.
“Madhya Pradesh Govt To Appoint Youths To Popularise Govt Schemes” ~ https://t.co/m8g7CSx3Ij.
Brilliant idea! India has a lot of social security programs, which can do with a bit of marketing to reach the masses. https://t.co/7SLDf71B8C pic.twitter.com/MHwaFa2u8r— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) March 2, 2023