We have compulsory retirement savings of 9% of income here in in Australia
In America it's 12.4% under our "Social Security" plan, although it (currently) only applies up to your first $115k or so of ordinary income per person. Still, if you're a two-income family of high wage earners, you could be saving $28,520 per year via the Social Security plan. Unfortunately, it's not "real" savings, it's actually a Ponzi scheme built on actuary tables. All the money for the program has been loaned out to other government agencies and spent already. Thus, most of our federal government actually owes money to the citizens by way to owing it to itself in the form of those loans from the SS Trust Fund. Still - point is that it's 12.4% in America and that's still barely a living wage. There's another couple percent tax that goes towards paying heavily subsidized healthcare for those age 65 and older as well, but that falls under the heading of "Healthcare needs a total overhaul in America."
80% of retirees cite Social Security as their main source of income. Is it possible that this isn't as dismal as it sounds? I'm expecting that -- once we're old enough to collect -- we'll spend that money . . . and hold onto our savings. Thus, the Social Security will be a big source of our income . . . but that won't really mean that we don't have other money at our disposal. The boat-guy is doing this: He says he has quite a few sources of income.
My parents are looking at that kind of scenario for themselves. They have it set up where my dad took his full social security payment and my mom is taking spousal benefit, which means 50% of my dad's benefit while her own benefit increases. They are doing it this way because (currently) her health is a little better than his, and since Social Security is only based on the individual, not the couple, they want my mom to have a larger benefit per month since she's likely to live longer, thus the math works out in favor of this. At any rate, they just need their small pile of cash (separate from their retirement savings) to last through a few years to age 70 when my mom can take her full individual benefit. By their math, they can then potentially live exclusively off Social Security benefits and never touch their retirement savings for anything but special circumstances or fun stuff.
In their case, living off Social Security as their primary income is indeed the goal, and it is a good one to have, since now all their retirement savings can go towards things they WANT instead of things they NEED.