“We did not have enough growth and we did not have social inclusion. Not only that, but we created greater inequality than was the case. There is no fundamental difference in the previous strategy of the president’s government.” Lopez Obrador The strategy pursued by this Government, including in good faith to favor those who do not enjoy social protection, has doubled the amount of resources for this informal economy which makes it, at the moment, more tolerable, but will be more tolerable in the future. “It creates a large number of Mexicans, 60% of Mexican workers, who will become old without pensions, without social protection and without the ability to provide for themselves,” says the Mexican intellectual. Hector Aguilar Camin.
This is confirmed by the historian and writer regarding the Nexus Forum: “What went wrong? Mexico 1990-2023″, which will bring together today and tomorrow analysts and thinkers such as José Casar, Ricardo Becerra, Valeria Moy, Santiago Levy, Mariana Campos, Jorge G. Castañeda, Gonzalo Hernández Lecuña, Jesús Silva Herzog Márquez, Salomon Czertorevsky. Gerardo Esquivel, Denis Merker and himself in Guadalajara International Book Fair.
The forum, divided into three analysis tables, arises from the article “What Went Wrong? Mexico 1990-2023”, by Santiago Levy and Luis Felipe López Calva, in which they show that there was a structural failure in Mexico from 1990 to 2023, which has to do with the fact that The country has not achieved economic growth with social inclusion, let alone a true welfare state. He says that leaving out public security, the burning sector of our public life, the creation of a true social welfare state is the central issue for Mexico’s future. But it is a country that cannot be seen.
“This is not on the horizon because it implies something that no one wants to talk about, which is fiscal reform geared toward that, just as Mexican society through its federal government pays for public education, so it must pay for the Social Security system. Health and medical care,” says Aguilar-Kamin. Pensions, protection in all areas, and unemployment insurance for all Mexicans because they are Mexicans.”
He says that this proposal is not “even remotely” on the part of any of the previous candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, nor do they want to present it. Raising it well means collecting taxes, and this is a very “anti-popular” idea, but it should be raised well.
“I’m not recommending that any of the candidates come out with this, but I would like, and this is the intent of the forum, for them to look and review the problem and ask the right question, because what it’s about here is this is going to cost you 4% or 5% of GDP and you’re going to pay a tremendous amount of taxes.” , but in exchange for this, you and your entire family, as in public schools, will have access to all the social guarantees created by the country for medical care, unemployment insurance and pensions. So it will cost you dearly, yes, but you will get invaluable assets that you don’t have.
Aguilar-Kamen insists that Levy and López Calva’s article shows that it is a complex, but urgent, issue in the face of the 60% of Mexicans who will face retirement within a few years. “Yes, it is a complex issue, yes, but it is the heart of one of Mexico’s major structural problems, and this is not Left or right, this is the ground that countries need to be able to grow and develop and become, which I believe is what we all want Mexico, a democratic state, “a prosperous state and a just state.”
The intellectual emphasizes that it is worth thinking about it in a different way and thinking about it in a more structural and more global way and that it can be the basis for improving productivity and thus generating wealth in conditions of social integration. And social protection for all.
He points out that during this six-year period, the strategy of giving money and resources to the informal part of the economy has increased, and although no one can be against people getting what they receive, the problem is that this perpetuates the structural schizophrenia of the economy. An economy that in the future will create a country with millions and millions of elderly people without any protection, because they will not be able to afford what is given to them.
“What they have given before or what they have given now will not be enough for them, and if the country continues its average growth, and let us not forget that in this six-year period, the country will end 2024 having grown on average 0, 0.1 or 0.5, which is very little, Also, the country, with a sluggish economy, will not have enough taxes and resources to continue financing these social programs.
The editor and director of Nexos talks about the political use they are making of social software during this six-year period. “We see the political use, I don’t think there’s been a government that has stated more brazenly or more clearly that it would use this on electoral issues.”
From this standpoint, Aguilar-Kamen insists on the spirit that characterized the article “What Failed? Mexico 1990-2023,” which motivates this discussion to be held at the FIL in Guadalajara, “the spirit is that it can actually be put on the agenda of the next government, whoever wins, as a point for serious reflection, at least for a serious debate, about redirecting all resources.” Today allocated to social programs and the maintenance of social protection institutions in the formal economy, if all this could be put together in the service of a comprehensive social welfare state and in any case look how much we lack is to complete the project and present it as a universal public good for the generations of Mexicans to come.
The intellectual points out that it is a structural issue and is a long and historical design error of the country that has led to two great “dichotomized” parts: the formal economy that pays taxes, and the informal economy that evades them, but this is where 60% of the Mexican population constitutes. “It was the same mistake, with many nuances, but it’s fundamentally the same mistake that all of neoliberalism and the whole fourth shift has made, in that it hasn’t changed. In that they haven’t been different.”
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