The Ventura of the future will talk about pensions

After losing count of the debates, reports and comments about the electoral campaign, I came to a conclusion that unfortunately no one can disprove: the André Ventura of the future will talk about pensions.

Every time Luís Montenegro assures us that he will not change anything in the pension system and Pedro Nuno Santos starts to raise the scarecrow of the privatisation of Social Security, they are both taking a few more steps towards that moment when the fraud on which the current pension system is based will become the issue (I write the issue and not a subject), not because it has finally been reflected upon but because the pension receipts of many pensioners will appear with miserable amounts. And note that I am not referring to those who have contributed little or nothing or who had very low salaries. I am thinking specifically of current active workers, those who are now supporting the system and who will retire in 35 years. Today their contributions pay for pensions with replacement rates averaging 75%. In other words, a worker with a salary of 1,500 euros will receive a pension of 1,125 euros. Yes, this is a cut in pensions whose necessity is not disputed; it is only surprising that it is not talked about (could the media's lack of attention to this cut have something to do with the fact that it was born in a socialist government, that of José Sócrates?) But this 1125 euros pension becomes a fortune when you do the math on what the pensioner would receive if the 40% replacement rate that will come into force in 35 or 40 years were applied: 600 euros.

Do you remember when everything was fine with immigration? And do you remember how we abruptly went from the moment when everything was fine to the realization that everything was bad? Well, in a few years, just a few, the same thing will happen with pensions, only worse. And obviously someone will come along and say in a thunderous tone what the so-called sensible people tried so hard to deny. But at that moment everything will be more difficult because in the meantime the time that could have been used to address the problem before it became a crisis has been wasted.

But let us return to this campaign, the one in 2025, with the pensioner transformed into the new Joe Public. A Joe Public to whom it is not worth telling the truth about the distortions of the system – if the political option of increasing the lowest pensions is maintained while maintaining the calculation system that, through very penalising replacement rates, lowers average pensions, it will not be many years before we can no longer distinguish between social pensions and pensions resulting from a professional career with the respective discounts. And above all, we have the pensioner as a voter whose ill will we try not to arouse, sometimes by assuring him that everything is fine and/or that a magical but definitive solution has been found for the Social Security accounts. Now we have the fantastic solution of immigrants who are saving Social Security, which in practical terms forces us to ask whether those who make these statements are mistaken, trying to deceive themselves or trying to deceive others.

Immigrants are not saving Social Security, they are making deductions that greatly help the current treasury but do not save Social Security because in a while they will also be entitled to their pensions that someone (who?) will have to pay. To make matters worse, the immigrants we are receiving will be even poorer pensioners, not only because their pensions will be calculated at very penalizing replacement rates, but also because in many of the families that immigrants form here, the women are restricted to domestic life, so they do not make deductions. The result: we will have couples in which only one receives a pension and it is lower.

Social Security has become for democracy what the Overseas War represented for the dictatorship: a blockade whose resolution, from the perspective of the respective elites, undermines the foundations of the regime. Demonizing those who think the problem should be addressed is the tactic invariably followed by those who sow storms. I feel like writing: they can only complain about themselves. But it's not worth it because complaining about others is their specialty.