The initiative to reform the pension system already sent to the Congress of the Union by President López Obrador establishes that a retired worker receives as a pension an amount equal to his last salary earned when he was active.
Nobody, of course, dares in public to question the fairness of the Obadorista proposal. Ah, but in private, the right opposes it with the fallacious argument of the lack of money to pay pensions.
But in addition to being a liar, the argument is hypocritical, because what the right really doesn’t like is the redistribution of social wealth. He would prefer to appropriate, as in the neoliberal era, these resources, even if the elderly survive in misery.
Because, in general, a retired elderly person only receives a third of the last salary earned. And while it is true that there are pensioners who earn more than that, it is also true that many old people do not even reach that meager third.
The problem is not, as economic theory and experience prove, a lack of resources. The key to the matter is in the sphere of the distribution of social wealth. Or, as they say in popular language, all the straps come from the same leather.
Ultimately, a decent pension is the condition for a decent life. But even if they say otherwise, the right does not care about the dignity of the people’s old age.
What’s more: if it were on the right, there should be no pensions. He even goes so far as to argue that longevity is an unsustainable social burden. And the basic problem is that people live too many years today.
The alternative would then be the abandonment of the elderly. Not treating their illnesses, not giving them medical attention, that is, letting them die. Who does not remember that dystopian film “When destiny catches up with us” that proposes the assisted suicide of abandoned elderly people or those without resources to live as a condition of survival in a society with many poor people and a handful of rich people.
To say, against all evidence, that society does not have the resources to give its elderly a decent life is a gigantic lie. And finally, a display of cannibalism.
In the next elections in Mexico the people will decide on the matter. On the one hand, PAN, PRI and PRD, the right-wing parties, with their cannibalistic proposal. On the other hand, the Worker movement with its popular, scientific, humane and supportive project.
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