WHO PAYS FOR PUBLIC SERVICES AND PENSIONS?

Connections of public services directly to workers’ contributions and to the distribution of economic output between wages and profits. Contending that strong health care, education, pensions, and social security require a smaller return on capital, before closing with an ironic account of Bismarck’s pension system and the gap between retirement age and workers’ life expectancy.

All of the above has served—I hope—to explain to you that nothing is free.

French public services—health care, pensions, social security, education, etc.—are paid for by our contributions. Those contributions come out of our wages. And our wages come from the distribution of the product, which is divided between wages and profits.

If you want high-quality public services, it’s very simple: you must reduce the return on capital to finance what benefits the entire population. David Ricardo was right.

The neo-fascists propose the opposite: lower wages, lower pensions, and the elimination of public services. Is that clear to you?

I can’t wrap up this nonsense without once again recalling the birth of the AFPs and pension funds, which trace their origins to a joke by Don Otto (according to Jorge Lillo).

It was the year 1889, and Otto von Bismarck, Prime Minister of Prussia and Chancellor of the new German Empire (1871), took pity on the sad plight of the workers who were living in the most appalling poverty.

He therefore decided to create a pension system, deducting a contribution from their meager wages that was intended to ensure retirees would not starve to death. These contributions soon amassed a large amount of capital. Otto von Bismarck asked his experts:

“At what age do workers die?”

The answer was very clear:

“Mr. Chancellor, they usually die between the ages of 40 and 50.”

“Ah!” exclaimed von Bismarck… “Then we’ll set the retirement age at 70” (sic).