Lazy People, Who Don’t Have Children, Want to Use the Money Earned by Children Raised by Other Lithuanians

"Lithuanians are not only born infrequently, they die too much, live a short life, and before they die, they go through the humiliating purgatory of poverty for a couple of decades. The current Government has announced the Family Package. You can understand its concern. Child poverty has long-term consequences: it worsens health, limits educational opportunities and can pass social inequality from generation to generation.

 

But even with noble concerns, one cannot lose one's head. The risk level of child poverty in Lithuania is about 17 percent. and this is even below the European Union (EU) average, where it is almost 20 percent. And the poverty level of pensioners in the EU is only about 15% on average, while in Lithuania it is as much as 43%. It is logical to ask - hasn't the government made a mistake with its package?

 

Lithuania needs children and the state must create better conditions for raising them. But demography does not end with the birth of a child. He needs to grow up in a safe environment not only for the couple of years targeted by his record care payments, but also when his parents become incapacitated or out of work when they divorce. The at-risk-of-poverty rates for such vulnerable groups are as high as pensioners or even higher. However, the risk of poverty in working households, where the main source of income is two wages, is several times lower - about 8 percent. The measures of the family package also ignore the huge differences in the situation of families with children.

 

What is the point of encouraging people to have more children and bragging about new social policy measures if the eyes are starved of the inconsistency and indifference of those policies to the plight of people whose fault they were born decades earlier or had an accident in their family?

 

No, fraudulent social engineering will not work, when people are divided into less and more worthy of social solidarity. Especially since that breakdown is the opposite of what it should be according to the objective needs for help.

 

None of this is an argument against support for families. On the contrary, these are arguments for a consistent social policy that is not limited to one short phase of a person's life. A child, an employee, an unemployed person, a disabled person, a parent, a pensioner - it is the same person at different stages of his life. Social security should help him overcome the risks when they hit hardest.

 

You can object - after all, pensions are also being increased. It was announced that next year they will grow by more than 10 percent. This is a significant nominal increase, but only nominal. It is hidden that the pension has already been bitten by the price increase this year. General inflation is about 6 percent, and for a person who spends all his income on the most necessary goods and services, the increase in prices can be even more painful than for the average consumer.

 

Secondly, pension increases must be assessed not only in terms of inflation, but also in terms of the general economic development of society. If wages and business income grow rapidly, and pensions lag behind them, pensioners move away from the standard of living of the working society.

 

Thirdly, you need to look at the starting point. When the pension is small, even a double-digit percentage increase for several years in a row is not enough. The average pension in Lithuania does not reach, and in the foreseeable future will hardly exceed, the risk of poverty, and for a person to leave the labor market, it automatically means a painful financial decline.

 

Over the past five years, the number of impoverished pensioners has increased from 200 to 240 thousand. That number wipes out all the politicians' promises and boasts about double-digit pension increases.

 

After changing the procedure for the use of the "Sodros" fund and the indexation of pensions, their growth has again become the object of annual promises. Politicians can once again present themselves as benefactors to pensioners. But on the other side of that benevolence, there is the disdain for the rights that people have earned themselves and the humiliation of their dignity. You don't need the government's grace, you need to respect the rights that people have earned by paying contributions throughout their working lives.

 

It is not appropriate to announce the increase of pensions to the prime minister, but to seek laziness and incompetence from his cabinet, so that the pension system is finally fixed and it no longer needs to be supported by excuses that it was the Soviet era. Retirement age is reached by people who have worked for Independent Lithuania for almost their entire career and paid contributions to "Sodra" in Lithuanian.

 

It is also justified by the fact that older people in Lithuania are not as poor as their income indicates, because the advantage is own housing. There is no need to pay rent and the property you own can be considered as accumulated capital. However, you can only live in the housing, it cannot be used to buy food, medicine or pay bills. Housing can reduce one important category of expenses (no need for rent), but it does not protect against a lack of income.

 

In addition, data from the European Central Bank's household finance and consumption survey do not support the assumption that older people in Lithuania are generally richer than younger people. On the contrary, the population of working age has better, more expensive real estate, and their financial assets are thus bigger.

 

The statistics of wealth distribution in Lithuania do not in any way show the advantage of pensioners. Upon reaching retirement age in Lithuania, income, property value, and consumption level drop significantly. It is rational to spread a similar level of well-being at all stages of the life path. Rational social policy countries strive for and achieve this.

 

Another argument that tries to justify this distorted social policy: children are investments in the future, and pensions are just a snack. Apparently, it is wrong to let pensioners eat away at the future of their grandchildren (and - of course, of course - the nation). In the end, it is even worth pausing to ask the question - who has eaten what here?

 

The current generation of pensioners is mainly those born in 1940-1960. They gave birth between 1965 and 1990. They gave birth to more than two children on average, i.e. as much as is necessary for the sustainable reproduction of the population. Now they are being told that the money brought to Sodra with a large surplus by their children's generation cannot be spent on their parents' pensions. You can't, because you need to leave reserves for pensions for the generation that decided to give birth half as often. So, who owes whom and who is already going to chew what?

 

Of course, the financial resources of the state are limited and priorities have to be chosen. But social policy is not a beauty contest where the most politically attractive slogan wins, even if it is demographic."