The good pay
We retired people got the pension and the extra pay for July last Wednesday. It occurred to someone a decade ago in the administration that the best way to make ends meet was to get paid five days early. And the tradition continues. I write in fear that this will be the last "double payroll" of our lives. I'm talking about the amount. The post-Covid-19 crisis will affect very directly those of us who live off the fourth pillar of the Welfare State.
Readjustments or cuts
The experience accumulated in 42 years of democracy teaches us that when it comes to tightening the political screws on the taxpayers, the government of the day speaks of readjustments; the opposition, of cuts. It's the same thing; we citizens always pay the price. The money that will reach us from Brussels to tackle this biblical and Chinese pandemic is conditioned - even if this social-communist government hides it - by a significant drop in pensions.
This was announced by the Governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, and ratified by the Eurogroup. Nothing is free. Calviño and Montoro -there is always a Montoro on our tax criminal horizon- are silent as dead people (without a location like victims of the purgatory of the virus of the East) because they still have a few months ahead of them to continue lying like miscreants.
You will remember that the PSOE and the UP (Peter and Paul) were shouting at the last electoral campaign before the populace in rallies and in the electoral debates preaching that "the revaluation of pensions with the annual CPI should be enshrined in the Magna Carta". Have you heard him again in these last three months of caging? No. Not a word.
Where is the Vice-President who left the Chamber to support the pensioners who were demanding a fair retirement from Congress? I can tell you: he was hiding in the Dina Bousselham case - I mean the Iglesias case - trying to dynamite' the order of Judge García-Castellón so that he would not be tried as a defendant after presenting himself as a victim of the state sewers. As a colleague has drawn, the state sewers no longer carry tricorns but tails. In two words: Neither the president nor his coalition deputy will defend the permanence and revaluation of pensions. The adjustment or cutback - so much is riding, so much is riding - will come in the next State Budget. Or by a Decree-Law of Caesar Maximus.
The state has paid out 9,754,740 pensions this month, 640 more than last month, when it fell by more than 38,504 due to the coronavirus war, including the 13,000 people who were displaced, according to expert Fernando Simón, a political-official spokesman for Illa, our Saviour. José Luis Escrivá, the minister of inclusion, social security and migration, seemed to be a judicious man in economic matters when he presided over the AIRF (Independent Authority of Fiscal Responsibility) in Mariano Rajoy's time. After breathing the air of La Moncloa, he has become a manirroto like the whole government. The dependence of Sánchez and Iglesias is so vertical that organically, according to the Wikipedia page, it depends directly on the president and then on Monarch Felipe VI. Are we in the antechamber of the Third Republic? We are if you think so.
Escrivá has already joined the expansion of public spending without raising his voice to explain how to balance the income. Total pension expenditure in Spain (retirement, widowhood, permanent disability, orphanhood and family allowances) amounted to 19,604.7 million euros this June, including the extra pay. The average pension is 1,160 euros (except for former deputies and senators who receive up to 3,000 euros per month, such as Cristina Almeida and Jaime Ignacio del Burgo, who have never contributed to Social Security). ) When citizens have denounced these privileges in parliament, all the groups have taken a stand against them. It is a shame that the crisis affects us all except the politicians. The gay economist from Liébana said on TRECE TV that the reduction in pensions could be between 20 and 30 per cent from January 2021. A Greek tragedy. A reduction not substantial but lethal.
After working for 42 years and paying contributions well above the legal limit, the maximum pension can be less than 2,000 euros per month. The most privileged of us will survive. Will the public authorities set an example by reducing the number of government bodies, ministries, councils and bars so that the tax burden is more evenly distributed among all? There is no sign of it. In one of the presidential sermons, Dr. Sanchez was asked if he and his endless government would lower their salaries after the crisis. Fifty days and ten thousand deaths later, he has said nothing and has not lowered his salary.
The black hole in social security is over 50 billion euros. And if we add to this the health care system, the paralysis caused by confinement and the fear of a return to strange normality, the deficit and debt will exceed 120% of GDP by the end of the year. We are bankrupt but Sánchez, Iglesias, Montoro and Calviño continue to play on board a sinking Titanic without the Commission for Reconstruction having reached any agreement on the future.
The idea of protecting workers and the right to a pension was proposed by Don José Canalejas in 1910. What a great president of Alfonso XIII! During his thirty months at the head of the Council of State, Canalejas designed the bases of the labor laws (chair law, maximum hours of 48 hours) and he himself paid pensions to families of soldiers who had died in Cuba out of his own pocket. But it would be Antonio Maura and Eduardo Dato who would initiate what was called the National Institute of Social Security (1921), the true seed of Social Security that was promoted by Franco's Girón de Velasco.
Specifically, the extraordinary payments began to be paid at Christmas 1944 along with the worker's Christmas basket (which was declared inalienable by the Constitutional Court) and in 1945 the July 18 payment (summer bonus) to face the holidays and celebrate the Victory against Marxism. Social Security was extended to all employees and their families.
This is the truth. That the PSOE claims credit for the creation of Social Security in Spain is as big a lie as the 12 de Octubre, La Paz and Puerta de Hierro hospitals. Or the swamps and the hydroelectric plants. All together. With so much "anti-fa", I have never heard anyone renounce the extraordinary payments for Franco's regime. To tell the truth, the Toledo Pact (April 6, 1995) was born to move the rights of social protection away from political and electoral debate. It was an enduring reform that began at the end of Felipe González' reign, on the initiative of Convergencia y Unió, and took four more years to be implemented (1999) under the mandate of José María Aznar.
Of the 15 recommendations that sought to stabilize the Spanish pension system, we highlight four: financing, maintaining purchasing power, building up reserves and improving and evolving contributions. The reserve fund reached 68 billion euros and after the 2008 crisis, Zapatero and Rajoy ended up practically depleting it. The Toledo Pact is one of the outstanding issues of our democracy. All governments have looked the other way when it comes to structural reforms such as updating, the age of retirement and the calculation of pensions.
Rodriguez Zapatero, who banished the word crisis from the dictionary, was forced by the men in black to freeze pensions in Spain for the first time and to raise the retirement age to 67. Long live the PSOE! Then Rajoy, after inheriting 11.4% of the shoemaker's deficit during his seven-year period of destruction and death of the business and social fabric -he left us the legacy of the Law of Historical Memory and Chiqulicuatre's performance in Eurovision-, Don Mariano, said, raised our pensions by 0.25%, after an invisible and homicidal axe in the personal income tax. Today, nine years after the tax increase by Don Cristóbal Montoro - he passed to the left by the extreme left - we have not recovered the level of the 2012 pensions.
The Toledo Pact seemed to be the ideal mechanism for all of us seniors not to feel the uncertainty and fear of changes in government. But here we are, at the beginning of last year, it seemed that the parliamentary groups had reached an agreement to set a rational calendar for increasing the number of years of contribution in line with life expectancy, the period of contribution (from 15 to 25 years) and dissuasive punishment of the EREs with early retirements; but no: United We Can, slammed the door and broke the consensus, claiming that "there was no consensus". Marxism-Leninism.
Pablo Iglesias dynamited the Toledo Pact for electoral reasons. At that time he spoke of the consecration of the Pensions in the Constitution. Once he has reached the Government, they no longer speak of caste because they are caste; they no longer speak of salary limitations because the carpet, the official car and the GOLDEN VISA are the real power; they no longer speak of where they live because they live in villas with a swimming pool and a doghouse, watched over by the Civil Guard; they no longer speak of mandates because theirs are lifelong, eternal eras and their whole philosophy is to place friends and family in charge of the udders of the state. Like Maduro in Venezuela, the Castros in Cuba or Kim Jon Il in North Korea. As Daniel Sanz says in a precise and memorable tweet: "Yes you can; you have been cheated". Not a single vote for these corrupt sackers in record time.
Go ahead and say that pensions should be exempt from income tax because they have been the intergenerational effort to pay our parents. And that's what some reputable legal experts recommend. There is a bill in Parliament that is stuck on the issue. But not a single parliamentary group is taking the initiative.
We pensioners are electoral cannon fodder because we believe that it is the government of the day that pays us and not the State to which we have generously contributed with our work. The other lie in pensions is that of investing in pension funds. We have heard this from all the Finance and Economy Ministers. Since I started working, I signed up for a fund with a state guarantee: the Post Office, which depends on the Post Office. Then it was absorbed by Banco Exterior, by Argentaria and ended up in BBVA. The idea in principle was not bad: you reduced the income tax base and deducted 15%. And when it came to recovering the money, you were exempt from 40%. Everything was perfect.
As long as you're 30, 40, 50 or 60 years old, you don't have to worry. But when you reach 65 you realize the deception: the great Montoro changed the rules in the middle of the game and not only do you not deduct but everything has to be counted as an income. In this case, you have to add it to your pension and take out, for example, about 500 euros a month as a supplement to your pension. On June 30, the Treasury devours you almost 1,500 euros. I have taken the matter to the Congress and the Senate from the extinct UPyD, to the PP, to the PSOE and to Citizens.
When you tell them to study a parliamentary initiative so that a reasonable monthly amount (between 500 and 1000 euros of your money) can be taken out tax-free, as a complement to the pension, that's the end of the conversation. No one is advocating benefiting the taxpayers and savers who have this private pension captive.
It is not their case, of course, where Parliament pays them about 20,000 euros of pension per Legislature. But I am also talking about private pension funds which have today lost more than a quarter of their value. The voracity of the Inland Revenue is insatiable. I was talking about Hernández de Cox and Escrivá to remind you that they advocate not triggering pensions. They mean that they will have to be adjusted. In other words, cut them. They never shoot at advisors, those privileged by lost profits, the lifetime pensions of former presidents and advisors, and even of fugitive coup leaders like Puigdemont or corrupt ones like Pujol.
Millions of pensioners have taken to the streets, especially in the Basque Country, to demand decent pensions. Many have gotten wet Friday after Friday. I don't think so. These protests remind me, I do not know why, of Joaquín and Alberto, who have been under the rubbish dump at Zaldívar for almost 150 days while the PNV and PSE are reasserting their hegemony in the north. All because they did not ask for help from the EMU. To Spain.
We pensioners are today the new post-Covid-19 suckers. And we will pay the biggest bill of this pandemic so badly managed by this gang of politicians from a wasteful government that passes students without exams to make them even more irresponsible and manageable. And with an opposition with no proposals to be alternative.
We have learned absolutely nothing. And the coronavirus has taught us that Health and Education, like Foreign Affairs or Defence, must be in the hands of the State. And like pensions, at least until Sanchez breaks the Single Social Security Fund at the end of the year to pay the PNV a few more moments at La Moncloa. Goodbye to the principle of equal opportunities! Goodbye to the effort! It is time for the opportunists. And of the miserable.
The world has stopped and this government, which is a Himalayan of lies, is still behind in all prevention. Nor will it tell the truth about the pension cuts until we check the Bankia bankbook. When that morning arrives, let us remember what we experienced on Wednesday 25 June, the fourth day of summer: we received our pay and the extra money. In full. It is like the unforgettable song of Miguel de Molina: la bien pagá.
The creators of this beautiful song were the Murcian composer Ramón Perelló and the lyricist from Seville Juan Mostaza. They wrote it during the Second Republic. It was the counterpoint to "Ojos Verdes" by Rafael de León, performed by Concha Piquer. The Valencian version always won. Democracy -always freedom- rescued Miguel de Molina from his exile in Buenos Aires and his song returned to the collective imagination. With the pension we will have left after the rescue (call it adjustment, call it cut) we will not even buy a kiss. We'll be left with two candles and no parné. We will remember at Christmas that this July advance payment was the last "paid" good.
Antonio Regalado runs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at: aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com