Karol Skorek – president of SPIR SWOJAK and author of acute socio-economic diagnoses – this time he is targeting the pension strategy in Poland.
In his opinion, it is not a question of whether the strategy will fail, but of erstwhile and with what bang. In the introduction it hits the authoritative message:
Many experts assure us that in Poland it is good and pleasant. Our full country should be smiling. We don't gotta worry about our money in ZUS. But I, despite these solemn assurances, do not sleep peacefully.
Skorek points to a key demographic problem: the proportion of older people to young people is relentlessly deteriorating. And there's no 1 to make up for future pensions:
The workers will be furious due to the fact that they will gotta pay the horrendous contributions. And pensioners will be angry due to the fact that their pensions will be hungry.
He mocks naive visions that everything will be done by robots and artificial intelligence:
This is the communicative of people who are humanists and have never worked in industry. The mill was the ones who saw the picture.
He explains that automation is not magic, and advanced betting needs capital and highly skilled people:
Advanced factories request advanced traffic maintenance services, which are well-paid professionals.
But if you are fiscally suffocating citizens, there is no investment. The Polish economy, he claims, is moving towards deindustrialisation.
In contrast to the optimism of any politicians pointing to immigration as salvation, The skin responds:
Are burning cars in Paris an example of successful assimilation of immigrants? Is the bombing in Sweden a successful example? Or rape in Germany?
Although it does not exclude the anticipation of assimilation, there is 1 condition:
You gotta have a strong and attractive culture. And we are in a time of crisis of values, a crisis of European civilization.
Skorek admits that in his perfect planet there would be no compulsory pension strategy at all:
I believe that this is 1 of the main reasons why fertility in developed countries is falling.
But being aware of the political impracticality of specified changes, it proposes something more possible: civic retirement:
Everyone pays the same in the form of a lump sum and receives the same amount. This is simply a postulate that can gain wider support.
He leaves the strongest words for a rating of 13th and 14th pensions:
It is simply a form of intergenerational plunder, where older people rob young Poles and people who are not yet born.
And he emphasizes the economical absurdity:
Additional remuneration in the private economy is simply a profit premium. Where is this profit in case of 13th and 14th retirement?
There is no – so you gotta indebt. And that threatens the disaster that Karol Skorek sees clearly:
I'm afraid we'll lose our liquidity someday. That the bankers will come and say, "Give money, and if not, give national silver, like forests."
And it resembles scenes from Greece: islands put up for sale, slogans about auctioning Acropolis.
Are we certain we won't be the object of the bidding ourselves, like those unfortunate Greeks?
