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Comment by Grombobulous

16 hours ago

I’m very wary of finger-pointing like your comment that ultimately serves to advocate for cutting quality of life for citizens.

Roughly 31% of Japan’s budget goes to social security. They don’t have problems keeping their high speed trains safe.

Cutting pensions won’t make trains safe.

I will also point out that on its own without further context, a high percentage of government spending going toward something doesn’t make that spending irresponsible or misappropriated. In the United States, a very high percentage of federal taxes are spent on Medicare and Social Security. But it should come as no sirprise that a very large percentage of federal income tax revenue is directly appropriated to pay for those things.

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Grombobulous

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Al-Khwarizmi  15 hours ago

Pension expenditure in Spain is out of proportion from any point of view, though. I'll provide links to some graphs because I think they give more information than my words could:

https://elequidistante.github.io/graficos-jongonzlz/pensione...

https://elequidistante.github.io/graficos-jongonzlz/pensione...

https://elequidistante.github.io/graficos-jongonzlz/pensione...

And maybe this is the most illustrative:

https://i.redd.it/uwvgxycxhjeg1.jpeg

So yes, the reason why we are underinvesting in pretty much everything is basically pensions. GDP is up, tax collection is up, debt to GDP is sligthly decreasing... but pension expenses keep growing at a fast pace so there's less and less money for everything else. And I say this with both of my parents earning the maximum pension, so I don't have an axe to grind, but it's just reality.

  • Kurtz79  2 hours ago

    It's a trend that is pretty much inevitable for a country where birth rates have been dropping starkly for decades, so that less people generating the taxable income that pays for those pensions enters the workforce, than those who leave it.

    At the same time, medical advances make it so that retirees live longer than before: https://relojpublico.es/poblacion/esperanza-de-vida

    If someone has solutions that would not cause widespread riots, I'm sure most goverments of countries in a similar situation would be all ears.

germandiago  16 hours ago

I am not suggesting cutting down pensions. My own parents are pensionists... so that you get an idea.

I am giving an objective explanation in all honesty: Spain needs a pensions reform probably at some point bc it is 40% of the expenses in the yearly budget, with a deficit and a demographic deficit. This will explode.

If it can be taken from elsewhere, better.

But you know how much are pensions in Spain and know our pension system in detail (it is literally a Poncy system...)? They are often higher than people working!

Whether we like it or not, we need to reform or collapse in the future. I wish it could be taken from elsewhere, but 40% is a lot...

There is a lot of useless expenses in public work in our "federal system" (comunidades autónomas).

  • Grombobulous  10 hours ago

    I'm not sure this article really points at government debt or spending as being immediately obviously relevant to this accident. Of course, it's probably too early to say, and that again makes me question why we are talking about pensions.

    I agree that good reforms that involve realistic budgets and high levels of accountability are very good things. However, I encourage a lot of caution and skepticism around ideologies that inevitably lead to cuts to benefits.

    The USA's pension system replaces a lower percentage of the average wage than Spain's system, and its universal healthcare for pensioners has higher exposure to out of pocket costs. Despite this, the debt to GDP ratio in the USA is higher than Spain, and there is a grand total of one government-operated high speed rail line which is barely high speed despite being 5x more populous.

    That's why I encourage caution: cutting pensions won't necessarily lead you to better outcomes, it might just leave you to cut pensions with no improvement in other areas.

    I know you are not suggesting cutting pensions directly but what I'm saying is that these types of comments contribute to people "voting against their own interests" so to speak.

square_usual  15 hours ago

Japan is a terrible comparison here because their rail network is privatized. They're also paying their pensions with debt, and their economy is really stagnant and not a shining example of a country doing well with a pension burden that high.

  • Grombobulous  15 hours ago

    I don’t know why that makes them a bad comparison, anyone can follow what Japan did with its train system.

qurren  15 hours ago

> They don’t have problems keeping their high speed trains safe

Their trains are safe, but they also have 2X the national suicide rate as Spain, which amounts to about 17000 more deaths per year. I'd attribute a big chunk of that to their work culture treating people like machines, whereas Spain's work culture tends to lean towards treating people like humans.

That isn't an excuse for railway mishaps, of course, but I'm just trying to de-romanticize Japan as some kind of magical perfect place. It's not. They might have gotten their railways right, but they have massive safety issues around mental health.