CSS archive photo of a facility in Boquete.
Let’s get a good, if painful, Seguro Social compromise
The Social Security Fund (Caja de Seguro Social or CSS) is in trouble, both on its retirement and disability pensions (IVM) and health care system sides. It has been looted for years, in an ubroken chain back to dictatorship times. It has been funded by a system that encourages all sorts of dodges – outright evasion, “costs of representation,” things included or excluded from the calculations.
Half of our work force is in the tiny businesses of the informal sector, not paying into, nor taking out of the system. Yes, an informal worker can go to a Seguro Social clinic and be served, for a small, generally nominal, fee. Yes, the fund has been raided to give stipends to those who don’t qualify for pensions.
A big drain has been on the investments of the fund’s resources. Sweetheart deals with the politically connected, gifts that disappear into the banking sytstem, outright embezzlent and so on have abounded.
We get proposals from the worst of the business sector and the political caste, amounting to “We keep what we stole and all you other folks pay more and receive less.” We get these foward-looking proposals for draconian penalties by those expecting anything but uniform application. We get all these fingers pointed at the poorer half of Panama’s work force, who toil in the informal sector.
We have not had a full and honest accounting, which would be a herculean task. We do know enough about the numbers to know that some painful moves will have to be made. Will we get a GOOD deal? That would be one that just about everybody dislikes.
Will after the special election to fill the House vacancy created by Matt Gaetz’s departure, the district still represented by a Republican who does his hair in a perv wave? Cropped from a Wikimedia photo by Gage Skidmore.
Coming to the USA…
An unusual and difficult period is coming for the American people. A rapist and convicted felon is taking over and making noises like he expects none of the political and constitutional checks and balances to apply to himself and his entourage. He’s chosen a shorteye perv to head the Justice Department.
How brutal does he want the fight to be? Maybe enough to bring in North Korean troops or the Russian Army, for all we know. He will face resistance, no matter how extreme he gets.
Time for Democrats to get real, get positive and get better leadership. As in, to pick up the pieces after a severe defeat and carry on the fight, not so much among ourselves as against the Republicans and their corporate base. Let’s end Trump’s effective presidency in by-elections to come and in the 2026 midterms.
The late Petra Kelly, founder of the Green movement who was shot dead way before her time, has a street in Munich named after her. Unattributed Wikimedia photo.
If we don’t do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.
Petra Kelly
Bear in mind…
What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
Wendell Phillips
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.
Emma Goldman
Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.
George Santayana
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