The pensions of 6,000 euros for Pedro Sánchez and the teacher who does not make ends meet

These days, most of the media have raised the issue of pensions with the excuse of the summer bonus that retirees in our country are getting. Thus, we have learned that some of them are going to collect for the first time more than 6,000 euros in one go in June. This will be possible thanks to the inflation-indexed revaluation that has raised the maximum pension in 2023 to €3,059 and the fact that the summer extra is added to the normal monthly transfer, which is also paid for Christmas.

They are true data. Only that presented in this way they blur the reality of the Spanish pension system as a whole. As with salaries, it is better to leave aside the monthly amounts to focus on the annual amount. And yes, in Spain we have pensions of €42,829.29/year. Pensions that will continue to rise in value each year at the rate of inflation that has moderated compared to recent highs, but that will continue to give us problems in the coming years, according to most forecasts.

The lucky ones with this pension are, according to data from the National Social Security Institute for the month of May 2023, a total of 476,160 people, out of a total of 9,074,316 pensioners. A figure slightly higher than 5%, which could be corrected slightly downwards if we discount permanent work disabilities in order to stick strictly to retirees. What the global photo says is that, after the package of the lucky ones with the maximum pension, there are 4,681,388 fellow citizens with a pension lower than the current SMI and a total of 3,916,768 Spaniards who are located in the wide fork that exists between the SMI and the maximum pension.

On Tuesday, the INE published its annual salary structure survey with data from 2021. The average annual profit per worker was 25,896.82 in that year. However, the most frequent salary is €18,503/year. Naturally, these figures will have to be updated with the increases for 2022 and also for 2023.. But, unlike pensions, salaries cannot be automatically updated with inflation, unless we want to turn Spain into a solar in a semester. The agreements between employers and unions marked a recommended increase of 4% for 2023 and 3% in 2024 and 2025, plus 1% depending on the rise in inflation.

We could go on and get drunk on an ocean of numbers. But the ones presented so far are enough to tell us without any shame that we have a serious problem with salaries and with smaller pensions.. Regardless of how colorful the headlines are about summer pensions of more than 6,000 euros.

But that does not mean that these pension payments of 6,000 euros in the month of June cannot serve us to continue affecting the minister José Luis Escrivá and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the unsupportive measure of indexing the increase in pensions, regardless of its amount, to the evolution of inflation.

It is not acceptable that workers lose purchasing power and pensions of €42,829.29/year, and those that are close to this figure are guaranteed to be updated. What the Government of Pedro Sánchez presents as a success of his management is a full-blown generational scam.

Their obligation as rulers, for the sake of the general interest, involved performing surgery, positively discriminating against low pensions —some unworthy—, but not for ensuring the level of income for all pensioners simply for the fact of being so..

Extra work and added social response for the governments of the future. The Bank of Spain, in its annual report published in May, has already made it abundantly clear that it will have to adjust the pension system —which Pedro Sánchez boasts about on Twitter with graphs that border on economic illiteracy— in 2025 to ensure its financial sustainability.

The rental agreement was not this. And the intergenerational pact, we don't even talk anymore. It is unacceptable, to bring up a sad example lived closely in recent days, that a primary school teacher in Barcelona does not make ends meet and cannot support his family —not easily, but without having to defer the payment of current expenses (food, basic services) – and that pensions, from some amounts, should not also bear part of the chronically bad economic situation that exists in the homes of many workers, whatever they say macro growth figures.

Newly published La youth atracada (Peninsula 2021), by José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz and Carlota Conde Gasca. The subtitle —How an aging electorate curtails the future of the young— perfectly explains what the text intends to illustrate. It is a pessimistic book, but very necessary. Some of the solutions he proposes are certainly naive, at the discretion of a server, but as a whole it perfectly illustrates, among many other issues, the reasons why a country that really wants to take itself seriously cannot celebrate decisions such as the latest reform of pensions. Decisions more typical of a reactionary and not at all courageous government than of an Executive that aspires to be remembered as the most progressive in history.