Comment Completely different retirement schemes (Score 1) 294
In the USA, and for almost ten years already in Mexico as well, retirement plans are personal: You save the money for your retirement, usually through a banking branch devoted to long-term finances. And hope for the best.
The scheme we had in Mexico until 2007, and that Argentina enjoys, is largely different: It's solidary retirement. You pay your retirement basically as a tax, it happens automatically before your paycheck arrives to your hands. What retired people receive comes from the active workers' dues.
How much do you receive for retirement? A large percentage (IIRC ~80%) of the salary you got during your last three years of employment, multiplied by the accumulated inflation/devaluation.
FWIW, Argentina moved to individual retirement schemes in the 1990s, when they followed rigidly neoliberal schemes. Retirement funds plummeted at the 2002 crisis, and –to avoid all retired people from losing everything, plus working people's money to disappear as well– they went back to the solidary retirement scheme.