2023-04-22 12:28:05
The other day I went on television to talk about pensions, one more time. It was a mini-catarsis: the adrenaline of the moment (the set and the good people you find there are still impressive), the opportunity to leave the office and talk about a topic that worries us… Also, while I was waiting (make-up, etc.), I was listening the previous debate on the ‘piece of news’ of the day: the surrogate motherhood of a ‘celebrity’ entry in years The guest said a phrase that hooked me: we have turned desire into necessity and necessity into right. One of the commentators blamed capitalism, the other tried to make him understand that he was forcing things a bit… Later, in the pension debate, another highlighted that the European Commission should accept a progressive pension reform.
Here the neuron was already dying… I understand the confusion in what you were saying because the debate on pensions is quite complex. On the one hand, it is very easy: Anyone quickly understands that we have a demographic problem that puts the sustainability of a delivery system at risk. But on the other hand it’s a mess because the system does too many things: it is, at the same time, a mechanism to transfer resources to the future (alternative to saving); insurance against the uncertainty of the date of death; and a mechanism that redistributes resources from rich to poor within the generation itself, but also between generations. That’s why to say that raising prices is progressive is simply wrong. Protecting pensioners at the expense of workers who will have to support the retirement of the ‘baby boomers’ and at the same time support their children does not sound very equitable. Nor is it a question of placing the entire burden of the adjustment on pensions. There is still room because by adjusting the retirement age and the rest of the adaptations can be distributed among all generations. And most importantly: it must be done transparently for the public and automatically, to avoid continuous reforms.
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In fact, to assess the impact of the welfare state as a redistributive mechanism, it would be necessary to analyze what happens throughout the life cycle, and this is the objective of the Sustainwell European research project that we have just started University of Barcelona with 13 other institutions. The most interesting thing is that we try to measure how well-being is provided by the three available institutions: the market, the State and the private sector (family and other social institutions).
Maybe that’s why my neuron fired and ended up crying out for help. Please, enough of this ‘tired’, ‘tiresome’ dichotomy between the right and the left! I heard once that the left was born as opposition to the ‘status quo’. And at this point, the ‘status quo’ has already been of all colors. Let’s get over it! Enough of demonizing the State (the public), the market, the private, or, on the contrary, of sacralizing them! In fact, “the public” is nothing more than a bunch of private anonymous and perhaps unresponsible. Enough of justifying what interests us, castling ourselves in the name of an ideology! After the spread of wild capitalism, in the 20th century the West carried out a few sociopolitical experiments applying extreme ideologies. The wild and antisocial market, the collectivism that annuls freedom, and tradition have already gone alone. There is life beyond. Let’s once and for all make a mixed system that works, taking the best of each one.. And let’s stop interpreting the human misery that uses it as “faults” of the system. No system can beat this, but we hope the other way around.
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