how are pensions paid for, if not by people paying into the scheme? It's the same with medical expenses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Social_Security_InstituteIn fact, if you look at the details, the fund has been predicted to completely run out of money in 2019, a trend anticipated even before Ortega was elected. Meaning: no more pensions at all.
In fact, the "good guys" of the IMF recently demanded that Ortega
raise the age that you get the pension from 60 to 65. Ortega's proposed changes to the system were designed to prevent a large number of people losing
100% of their pensions, which is the IMF's proposal. Losing 5 years worth of pension would be a
big cut. Assuming a life expectancy of 75 years, that would be losing 5 out of 15 years worth of pension, on average.
this way, 5% of pensions are "lost" to a medicare-type insurance scheme, but you get something for that money - medical coverage. And an extra 0.75% of wages are "lost" to retirement savings, but you're granted an extra 5
years of pension compared to the IMF's alternative proposal.
What's the alternative plan then? The opposition using "setting fire to things" as their proposal would seem to suggest that they don't actually have an alternative and just want to use this as an excuse to seize power. If they have a better solution, let them present it. Nope, you can bet that if they take power they'll enact the IMF proposal of raising the retirement age to 65, if not 70, while privatizing hospitals and slashing corporate taxes. e.g. like Honduras.
Same for the increase in wage tax to fix a deficit in social spending. Would make sense if it was an income-related tax, but this way, the poor are affected disproportionally. Fixing a deficit in social support spending by indiscriminately increasing worker taxes =/= boosting social support structures
Something can be said for increasing employer taxes. As long as you don't hurt business so much that they need to fire people or decrease wages, because then you're only making the group that needs social support larger.
This all seems contradictory and confused. you don't support cuts to spending, you don't support increases to taxes, what do you support then? When spending > taxes one or the other need to change.
And it's not "indiscriminately" increasing the costs. Someone with 10 times the incomes pays 10 times the additional taxes. However, both people earn the same pension. It's still a net transfer of wealth from rich to poor.