International comparisons are difficult, because the numbers are rarely comparable. The US system is based on paying large amounts of money to people, who then use large amounts of money for paying for various services. The European system pays or subsidizes many of those services with tax money, while nominal wages and benefits are lower.

The US social security is not a pension system. It's a welfare system designed to pay for basic necessities for those with no other substantial income. Its nominal target is replacing 40% of income, though that decreases with income. Mid-income people already receive less than 40% of their former wages.

Mandatory pensions typically replace 60-80% of income. Their purpose is to support retirement without a substantial decrease in quality of life. The French system, as far as I understand, is rather generous, aiming to replace 70-80% of income.

Take a look at the maximum pension payment (which you'd get as a programmer in the US making more than > $147,000 per year) between France and the US.

France: €1,714 ($1,714 USD) per month in 2022 [1]

US: $3,345 per month for someone who files at full retirement age [2]

[1] https://www.cleiss.fr/docs/regimes/regime_france/an_3.html

[2] https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/questions-an...

Not a specialist at all: I relocated to Japan, and have only worked about one year in France... But you are missing a (big) piece of the French pension scheme: the Agirc-Arrco system, which is mandatory and complement the base system your link is referring to.

Someone at 60k€ should expect a total retirement of roughly 3,200€/month (back of the envelope calculation). Someone making 150k€ would expect a retirement of about 7,000€/month (again, back of the envelope calculation). Making 300k€, you would expect close to 14k€/month (again, back of the envelope calculation). I think that's pretty much the maximum you can get, it doesn't scale much further than that.

Off-topic: any reasons related to the current topic that you relocated to Japan?

Absolutely none whatsoever.

Financial concerns didn’t weight at all on my mind when deciding to move here, so I can’t tell you if it’s better or worse.

I strongly doubt it’s better, especially for retirement, but I could be wrong.

So I’m not even sure why I’m arguing about cross border salaries or retirement benefits…

The Agirc-Arrco is a separate, compulsory system that has separate contributions to the state pension.

Of course, who knows how long Social Security is actually going to last, given the repeated Republican tactic of squeezing money from its line items to give to tax cuts instead.

Macron is pushing for similar things in France.