This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

The botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two injections of what was intended to be a lethal dose of pentobarbital on September 30, is—horrifically—not unique: As my colleague Elizabeth Bruenig wrote, it wasn’t even the first botched execution in Tennessee this year. The fact that officials tried twice to kill her is somewhat more unusual, but not without precedent.

Consider the case of Margaret Dickson, a Scottish woman of the early 1700s. Estranged from her husband, Dickson took up work as a domestic in the town of Kelso, where she conceived a child out of wedlock but hid the pregnancy for fear of being shunned. She testified that she’d disposed of the baby after it was stillborn, but the body was found, and she was arrested. Under Scottish law at the time, concealment of a pregnancy was considered evidence of intent to commit infanticide. Dickson was convicted and sentenced to hang in Edinburgh in 1724.

Following what was then the practice, Dickson’s execution was public. She was hanged; her body was placed in a coffin and carted away for burial (by some accounts following a tussle with body snatchers who hoped to procure the corpse for dissection by medical students). Along the way, the burial party stopped for a beer, at which point noise was heard from inside the coffin. The lid was pried off, and Dickson was found alive, though confused. Dickson’s survival became an object of fascination and Dickson herself a sort of folk hero, the historian Mikki Brock, the author of a forthcoming book about Dickson, told me. Authorities in Edinburgh initially sought to rehang her, but they were never able to marshal enough support to do so. Dickson, who came to be nicknamed “Half-Hangit Maggie” (that is, half-hanged), lived into the 1750s.

Or take Joseph Samuel, a criminal who was sent from England to a penal colony in Australia. Once there, he was implicated in the murder of a police officer investigating a robbery. Samuel was convicted and sentenced to hang in September 1803, also publicly. It didn’t go well. On the first try, the rope around Samuel’s neck snapped. On the second, the noose unraveled. By then, the crowd was growing restive; a hasty third attempt also ended with a broken rope. Observers at the scene concluded that the mishaps were a sign from God that Samuel should not be killed, and the governor apparently concurred, commuting Samuel’s sentence to life imprisonment. (Three years later, Samuel disappeared at sea during an escape attempt with other convicts and was presumed drowned; perhaps God’s view was not as clear as it seemed at the gallows.)

A third celebrated case was that of John “Babbacombe” Lee, who was convicted of the 1884 murder of his employer and sentenced to die. (By that point, executions in Britain had moved out of the public and into prison yards.) Just like Samuel, Lee was spared by malfunctioning equipment: A trapdoor under the gallows, meant to release the condemned and snap his neck, had been tested, yet it failed three times to open. Lee’s sentence was commuted to life by the British home secretary, Sir William Harcourt, who said, “It would shock the feelings of anyone if a man had twice to pay the pangs of imminent death.” Lee was eventually paroled in 1907. Now infamous as “the man they couldn’t hang,” he wrote an autobiography and was the subject of a 1912 silent film, but he then faded from the historical record. He appears to have died in the 1940s, perhaps in Milwaukee.

When I first heard the stories of Half-Hangit Maggie and Babbacombe Lee as a child, I knew they were historical, but they seemed to belong more to the realm of myth or fairy tale. Hangings, mysterious mechanical failures, assertions of divine intervention—all of these seemed like things out of fiction. It was easy to chuckle at quaint details, such as the apocryphal tale that Dickson was required to remarry her husband because she’d been declared dead. And though I’d read about the beheadings of Charles I and Louis XVI, the specter of public execution felt distant enough from modern civilization to be faintly unreal.

Now all of these things seem much less remote. Until President Trump reversed course yesterday, the Defense Department planned to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, who massacred comrades at Fort Hood in 2009. Pike’s fate is up in the air after her twice-failed execution. Pike, who was convicted of a brutal murder in 1995, has returned from a hospital to prison. The state official who oversaw capital punishment has resigned, and the governor has temporarily paused all executions in Tennessee. Her lawyers have requested that her sentence be commuted to life in prison.

The doctor and ethicist Lydia Dugdale writes in The Dispatch that U.S. history offers a grim precedent. In 1946, a 16-year-old boy confessed to killing his employer and was sentenced to die via electrocution. A first attempt failed, and his lawyers sought to block a second. The Supreme Court ruled against them, and he was killed that year. But Dugdale argues that this precedent should not apply here. “From Pike’s markedly swollen and chemically burned arms, to her profound cognitive impairment (the severity of which remains unknown), the state has already inflicted a cruel and unusual punishment on Christa,” she writes. Setting aside the law, “as a matter of sheer ethics, if the state has vowed not to punish prisoners cruelly but has inadvertently done so, the state ought not attempt the same method of execution again.” (In this year’s other botched Tennessee case, Tony Carruthers’s failed execution left him partially paralyzed. He received a one-year reprieve, and advocates have called for his sentence to be commuted.)

The historical cases of the men and women they couldn’t hang feel much closer to the present day than they once did. And although some of the visceral details still sound like the stuff of myth, the pragmatic and humane outcomes of these situations stand out more against the backdrop of the recent news. Support for the death penalty has dropped since the 1990s, barely topping 50 percent today. Views are closely correlated with religion—white Protestants are far more likely to back it than any other group, according to polling from the Public Religion Research Institute. For religious supporters of capital punishment, the idea that a failed execution is a sign from above might not be so far-fetched. Among the nonreligious, many people may flatter themselves to believe that contemporary society possesses greater reason and logic than our forebears. Just as we try to understand our ancestors by how they handled cases such as those of Dickson, Samuel, and Lee, future generations will judge our society by its actions.

Related:

• A terrible way to die, a terrifying way to survive
• The real harm of a public execution

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

• Jonathan Chait: Five fabulous days of Katie Zacharia
• Exclusive: He joined the military. They reported his wife to ICE.
• How Pete Hegseth’s plan for a reality-TV execution imploded
• Imagine every AI agent on Earth buying the same cheap paper towels.

Today’s News

1. President Trump’s new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was fired after less than a week in the role, according to three people familiar with the matter. Her dismissal followed criticism of her first press briefing on Tuesday and questions about her legal credentials.
2. Three children and a teacher were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, yesterday. Police said that a bystander pursued the 16-year-old shooter into the school and fatally shot him; another child and a teacher were critically injured.
3. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez donated $1 million to support Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign in Michigan. El-Sayed is running against Republican Mike Rogers in a race that could determine control of the Senate in November.

Dispatches

• Over/Under: Gamblers are more likely to lose money than make it—yet they keep coming back, Will Gottsegen writes. In the first edition of Over/Under, he explores why bettors return to casinos and prediction apps even when it’s not in their financial interest.
• The Books Briefing: Don’t listen to the romantasy haters, Talya Zax writes. The best-selling genre is more than just smut.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Big Tech Oligarchs Have a Terrible Plan for Humanity

By Bernie Sanders

Should human beings remain in control of planet Earth? Or should we be replaced as the dominant species? As absurd as these questions may sound, and as obvious as the answers may seem, the Big Tech oligarchs funding the artificial-intelligence revolution have responded in ways that should alarm all of us.

In Silicon Valley, some of the wealthiest people on Earth believe that they have the power to create a superior species. Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, wrote in 2017 that AI would allow humans to become “the first species ever to design our own descendants.” What this means for humans, however, remains unclear. According to Altman, we will either jump-start digital intelligence “and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” In other words, humans have a choice: face extinction or merge with machines. “I believe the merge has already started,” Altman added, and is “probably our best-case scenario.”

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

• Watching for a blue wave in South Carolina
• What the loss of Starshield revealed
• How the Catholic Church is rethinking war
• What three gene-therapy deaths have in common
• The cutest target of Trump’s D.C. makeover

Culture Break

Watch. Nathan Fielder’s documentary about Elizabeth Holmes (out now in theaters) is a captivating study of self-perception, David Sims writes.

Read. Stephanie Bai asked The Atlantic’s writers and editors to share some of the best first lines in modern literature.

Play our daily crossword.

PS

A great folk hero needs a good nickname, which is why Billy the Kid and “Pretty Boy” Floyd endure. Babbacombe Lee—the name comes from the site of the murder—belongs to that tier. I first encountered it on the strange, entrancing cover of an album, a 1971 “folk-rock opera” by the English band Fairport Convention. I wouldn’t rank “Babbacombe” Lee as prime Fairport, but it’s an entertaining listen. As for Half-Hangit Maggie, anyone visiting the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, the site of her execution, can have a pint at her namesake pub, Maggie Dickson’s. Just don’t expect it to produce any miraculous resuscitations.

— David

Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Il governo italiano scrive in un tribunale che il Paese è dentro una guerra mondiale. In piazza, chi quella guerra la paga viene chiamato reato e teppismo. Oggi il Consiglio di Stato ha dato torto all’Agenzia delle Dogane, che per nove mesi ha negato a una giornalista il dato sulle armi passate dal porto di Ravenna. Per difendere quel no, gli avvocati del governo, l’Avvocatura dello Stato, avevano scritto nero su bianco: è in corso «una guerra mondiale ibrida e a pezzi che coinvolge anche l’Italia». Il giudice ha risposto: pericolo «astratto e ipotetico». I dati vanno consegnati. Ma la frase resta agli atti, e quella guerra il Parlamento non l’ha mai dichiarata. Intanto il Sud è fermo da due settimane: Calabria, Sicilia, Puglia, Campania, Basilicata. Un pieno di tir da 1.500 a 2.500 euro. In Puglia 150 distributori Eni su 300 a secco. Lo sconto sulle accise è scaduto il 6 ottobre. Cinquemila agricoltori con i trattori a Bari chiedono lo stato di crisi. La Regione mette 30 milioni, il governo nazionale non compare. Oggi gli studenti in piazza in tutta Italia: «soldi alla scuola, non alla guerra». Il ministro Valditara: «teppismo politico». Meloni: «ci stiamo interrogando». Salvini: «studiamo da mesi». Lollobrigida: «bloccare le strade è un reato». In Francia 70.000 studenti in piazza e 504 arresti in un giorno a Parigi. In Albania 143 giorni di proteste, ministeri assaltati, contro Rama e il resort da 4 miliardi di Jared Kushner. L’Europa che si riarma è la stessa che non sa più pagare il gasolio e le scuole, e che risponde alle piazze con la polizia. A Levante questa sera, venerdì 16 ottobre 2026, conduce Jeff Hoffman. Ospiti: Moni Ovadia, attore, musicista, scrittore, voce ebraica contro la guerra e contro l’uso politico della memoria; Margherita Furlan, giornalista e analista geopolitica, fondatrice di Casa del Sole TV. Affrontiamo insieme: Il caso Ravenna: chi ha scritto «guerra mondiale» e chi ha detto no L’articolo 78 della Costituzione: la guerra la deliberano le Camere Dal «reato» di Lollobrigida al «teppismo» di Valditara: le parole del potere contro chi protesta Il Sud fermo e il prezzo del gasolio: la guerra lo alza, il governo non lo attutisce Dal ddl antisemitismo alle piazze: la stretta sul dissenso è un disegno? Parigi, Tirana, Roma: tre Paesi, una sola scena LIBRI DEGLI OSPITI Moni Ovadia, «Un ebreo contro», Edizioni Gruppo Abele Margherita Furlan, «BRICS Scacco Matto» (disponibile in italiano, inglese, russo) SOSTIENI CASA DEL SOLE TV Casa del Sole TV è un progetto di giornalismo indipendente, autofinanziato da sei anni, senza editori e senza partiti. Per donazioni con bonifico: IBAN: IT63P0326822300052392596590 Intestato a: La Casa del Sole Edizioni Causale: Erogazione liberale Casa del Sole TV Membership YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CasadelSoleT… Analista Multipolare €5/mese Inviato della Verità €15/mese Architetto del Futuro €25/mese SEGUI CASA DEL SOLE TV YouTube: @CasadelSoleTVChannel Sito: casadelsole.tv #Levante #CasadelSoleTV #MargheritaFurlan #MoniOvadia #Geopolitica #Multipolarismo #caroGasolio #accise #Ravenna #NoMeloniDay #AvvocaturadelloStato #ConsigliodiStato #sciopero #Europa

L'articolo 🔴 IN GUERRA LO DICE L’AVVOCATURA DELLO STATO | LEVANTE LIVE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.

– Italia, la piazza sfida il riarmo di Margherita Furlan – Avvocatura dello Stato: è guerra mondiale ibrida di Jeff Hoffman – La Francia ferma i suoi figli di Jeff Hoffman – Tirana in fiamme, Rama non cede di Jeff Hoffman – USA e UE sempre più distanti di Gionata Chatillard – Due stretti in fiamme, l’Europa paga di Jeff Hoffman – Taiwan cerca alternative a Hormuz, Trump si inserisce di Ivan Bodyan – Buon giro intorno al Sole A cura di Margherita Furlan Con la collaborazione di Gionata Chatillard, Ivan Bodyan e Jeff Hoffman Editing di Mario Ferdinandi CASA DEL SOLE TV — Informazione libera e indipendente Il nostro lavoro è possibile solo grazie al vostro sostegno. Casa del Sole TV non ha editori forti né finanziamenti pubblici: siamo sostenuti da voi, il nostro pubblico. Se credi nel valore di un’informazione che non tace, aiutaci a continuare. Dona tramite bonifico bancario: IBAN: IT63P0326822300052392596590 Intestato a: LA CASA DEL SOLE EDIZIONI Causale: Donazione Casa del Sole TV Dona tramite PayPal: paypal.me/casadelsoletv Sostegno ricorrente: casadelsole.tv/sostienici Anche un piccolo contributo fa la differenza. Grazie di cuore! CasaDelSoleTV, CasaDelSoleTG, MargheritaFurlan, GiuliettoChiesa,censura, russofobia, Trump, NATO, Crisi, Transizione, Ucraina, Kiev, EuroMaidan, Crimea, Donbass, Donetsk, Syria, Iran, PardonSnowden, Nuova Via Della Seta, Pechino, Putin, Libano, guerra, mondomultipolare, multipolarismo, Mosca, XiJinping, Levante, Medio Oriente, Palestina, Gaza, MiddleEast, BRICS, Hormuz

L'articolo 🔴GUERRA MONDIALE IBRIDA | 16.10.26 proviene da Casa del Sole TV.

Chancellor John Healey is reportedly considering raising the tax on bank profits at the Budget, as a means of dealing with the government’s spending challenges

When he was in charge of Apple, Steve Jobs was notorious for projecting a “reality distortion field.” That was the jokey way his employees described Jobs’s mix of charisma and bravado and his demanding management style—which would lead people to accept seemingly impossible deadlines, or to promise that they could fix unfixable problems. A malfunctioning version of the same phenomenon once surrounded Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the failed medical start-up Theranos. She worshipped Jobs, imitating his style and unnerving confidence, even while presiding over an imploding enterprise. Her promises of a device that could affordably perform rapid medical tests with only a drop of blood were, at best, fantastical; once valued at $9 billion, Theranos collapsed into nothing. In 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding her investors.

In the new documentary You Can See Everything, the comedian and television auteur Nathan Fielder steps into Holmes’s reality-distortion field. Fielder, accompanied by his co-director, Lance Oppenheim, and a small camera crew, essentially moved into Holmes’s abode for the 34 days before she reported to federal prison. The team received fairly unfettered access to her, her two small children, and her partner, the entrepreneur Billy Evans, who professes obsessional devotion to Holmes. What Fielder was expecting to find while staying at the family’s Del Mar, California, rental is unclear, but he ends up in an odd and unsettling game of cat and mouse: He’s trying to suss out whether Holmes is a master manipulator or someone so deeply convinced of her own genius that she can’t distinguish fiction from fact.

The film capturing that experience is an odyssey of human perception. Fielder knows that no matter how intimate his time with Holmes is, the minute the camera is trained on her, both he and the audience will be consumed by the question of whether she’s giving yet another performance. The movie unfolds and evolves over nearly three hours, spanning both the month ahead of Holmes’s May 2023 incarceration and the years following; throughout, Fielder pores over his interactions with not just Holmes but also the people around her, sifting for kernels of authenticity. What emerges is a transfixing portrait of a phenomenon most viewers will understand—a deep desire to empathize, even as we are horrified by what’s occurring or suspect we’re being lied to.

[Read: Manipulator vs. manipulator]

Holmes would disagree about that last part. Early on, she plainly states to Fielder that she has never told a lie, a statement so bewildering that it cracks his reliably deadpan expression. Watching him work to make sense of what she could mean by that, I thought of Jobs’s strange force of personality. Holmes has saucer-shaped, striking blue eyes, and she repeatedly meets Fielder’s squinty gaze with an unblinking stare and gauzy smile. Holmes may indeed be flatly misleading her interviewer, but she comes off as unnervingly sure that she’s being honest; she’s perhaps deceiving herself alongside the people in her orbit.

Evans is a vital part of her new facade, which has morphed from the elite-businesswoman persona of her CEO days to that of a loving mother and partner. Holmes often has a child draped over her, and she seems profoundly attached to her worshipful partner. Yet at other times, Evans gives off a controlling air. He plucks a bowl from her because she’s not stirring eggs quickly enough. When Fielder’s questions probe too close to an uncomfortable topic, Evans will show up, put his hands on Holmes’s shoulders, and softly try to shut down the conversation. The claustrophobic proximity between Fielder and his subjects comes across visually: Oppenheim shoots them all with zoom lenses, holding on their faces for a discomfitingly long time as they wince, frown, and grin. Like his co-director, he’s searching for the truth by getting as physically close as he can. Given Holmes’s past, however, the task of uncovering anything feels impossible.

Fielder is obviously uninterested in relitigating the details of Holmes’s case; she appears firmly assured that she did nothing wrong, and he knows there’s nothing he can do to tell her otherwise. Instead, he pokes at how she takes in the world, and how Evans is helping to feed her surreal self-image. It also becomes apparent that the pair are working on a new version of Theranos, chatting to investors and patent lawyers on the phone with abandon. When the harsh reality facing her—that she’ll soon have to leave her children behind—peeks through, her devastation seems genuine. But those moments then flit by as Holmes and Evans try to ponder a brighter future.

[Read: The comic who’s his own worst enemy]

The first half of the movie consists of captivating fly-on-the-wall footage. The second half, which Fielder and Oppenheim have begged critics not to spoil (and I do think it’s fun to experience it cold), establishes You Can See Everything as one of the best films of the year. That portion finds Fielder fixating on his brief time with Holmes and the untoward influence Evans had over it: He brings in other perspectives to consult, re-creates scenes to better understand them (something he’s wont to do, especially on his fascinating HBO show, The Rehearsal), and, most important, reckons with his role in telling this chapter of Holmes’s life story.

Fielder is smart enough to know that his celebrity presence further pierces the bubble around how we perceive ourselves and one another. But he quickly developed a sort of emotional intimacy with Holmes, even as he sought to remain objective. You Can See Everything is a bold title, an invitation from Holmes that she is unlikely to follow through on. Can Fielder see everything that’s going on in her head? Beyond that, can he be an effective audience surrogate so viewers can see what he sees? The true question of this documentary isn’t just whether Holmes—who has been a figure of societal fascination for more than a decade—is putting on another performance, but also whether that’s all we, the viewers, crave from Holmes anyway.

Baroness Nicky Morgan said that many BBC programmes should be available for subscription instead of a levy

The FBI and US Postal Service's law enforcement arm said on Thursday they were investigating suspicious mailings, including some sent to state election officials

Cláudio Pereira, conhecido artisticamente como Kelad, vai lançar hoje às 18h o seu novo single “Menina de Tavira”, inspirado numa “fase muito feliz” da sua vida no Algarve.

Apesar de ser natural de Castro Daire, no distrito de Viseu, em 2024 viveu e trabalhou em Tavira durante quase seis meses. Mesmo longe de casa, diz ter sido uma experiência que o marcou “profundamente” e aponta como causas a beleza da cidade, que considera uma das mais bonitas de Portugal, as pessoas que conheceu e os momentos que viveu. De tal forma que decidiu dar vida a uma canção que “eternizasse” essa fase feliz da sua vida.

Ao contrário dos seus temas anteriores – “mais ligados à dor e ao fim de relações” -, “Menina de Tavira” é uma canção “assumidamente feliz, embora marcada pela saudade”.

A homenagem a Tavira prolonga-se também no videoclipe, mostrando algumas das suas ruas, casas tradicionais, azulejos e a emblemática ponte romana, num formato de curta-metragem romântica, “inspirada no cinema e em histórias de amor em que duas pessoas se cruzam repetidamente até finalmente se encontrarem”.

Musicalmente, o tema parte da inspiração de “Garota de Ipanema”, de Tom Jobim e Vinicius de Moraes, mas procura uma identidade nacional cruzando bossa nova, pop, R&B e música tradicional, com a presença da guitarra portuguesa. 

A música foi gravada nos Satori Studios, em Viseu, e contou com Bernardo Vicente na guitarra clássica, Pedro Bento no baixo e nas guitarras clássica e elétrica, Francisco Henriques na guitarra portuguesa e, na bateria, Daniel Tejo e Pedro Bento. A mistura e a masterização ficaram a cargo de Pedro Bento.

A canção vai estrear às 18h de hoje e pode ser ouvida (e vista) aqui.

Se vienen elecciones y la vivienda es un tema clave en el que los partidos deberán posicionarse. Ante la falta de propuestas de justicia social y redistribución, algunos buscan dos chivos expiatorios: los migrantes y la gente mayor.

A por los migrantes, poniendo el foco en los extranjeros racializados y más pobres del sur global, que trabajan en sectores precarios como los cuidados, el campo o la construcción, y obviando a los del norte global con alto poder adquisitivo. A por la gente mayor, porque supuestamente las clases trabajadoras que viven de una pensión pública abusan del erario y limitan el gasto público. Así, las pensiones han entrado en el debate para recortarlas, no para ensanchar derechos. Sin embargo, la migración y las pensiones públicas son dos pilares que revitalizan la economía productiva y reproductiva, generan protección social y cubren la demanda de bienes y servicios esenciales de las clases populares.

A esta mala prensa contribuye también, de forma inconsciente, mucha gente no necesariamente de derechas. Es desesperante oír entre colegas y amigos tanto pesimismo sobre la posibilidad de recibir una pensión digna. Este sentimiento es una victoria de muchos actores, incluidos organismos internacionales de prestigio, que desde los años ochenta no se cansan de repetir que los sistemas públicos como el nuestro no son sostenibles. Aquí quiero mostrar que lo son más de lo que nos quieren hacer pensar, que los privados también dependen de los recursos materiales disponibles y cómo seguir mejorando sin privatizar.

De entrada, los datos recientes de INTegraSS, la herramienta de proyección de la Seguridad Social, desmienten categóricamente ese pesimismo. Según sus estimaciones, basadas en microdatos administrativos reales, nuestro sistema público será capaz de garantizar en 2070 una pensión media de 1.826 euros al mes para los hombres y de 1.641 euros para las mujeres, a precios de 2024. La brecha de género persiste, pero pasaría de un 31,1% en 2024 a un 10,1%.

La demografía no es una ciencia exacta, pero con unos flujos migratorios más ajustados a los observados se estima que el gasto en pensiones llegue al 15,3% del PIB en 2050 y al 14,2% en 2070, lejos del 17,3% y el 16,7% de la Comisión Europea y por debajo del 16,1% y el 14,7% de la AIReF. Italia y Francia ya rondan hoy el 15% y se mantienen en pie, incluso tras comprometerse a destinar un 5% del PIB a defensa y seguridad en 2035.

Además, nuestro sistema tiene importantes mecanismos de redistribución intra e intergeneracional, aunque aún puede mejorar mucho. Impone un suelo (pensiones mínimas) y un techo (pensiones máximas) que redistribuyen según la necesidad y evitan trasladar a las prestaciones las desigualdades del mercado laboral. Para 2070, el peso de las pensiones de jubilación en máximos pasaría del 7% al 11,3%, y el de las mínimas, del 18,7% al 10,6%, lo que supone limitar desigualdades por arriba y tener menos pensionistas dependientes de complementos mínimos.

Alarmas por privatizar

Aplacado el alarmismo, lo que sí debería hacer saltar las alarmas son las llamadas a privatizar y capitalizar las pensiones (invertir las cotizaciones en cuentas privadas). Por supuesto, no debería haber ningún problema en añadir sistemas de ahorro complementarios, sobre todo colectivos y de mutualización del riesgo. Pero eso no permite escapar de la demografía ni de los problemas financieros.

Los sistemas de reparto como el español dependen de la productividad (inversión), de que haya trabajadores cotizando (pleno empleo) y, en última instancia, de un gobierno capaz de pagar sus obligaciones en una moneda que mantenga el poder adquisitivo (soberanía monetaria). La trampa de los sistemas de capitalización es que también necesitan gente joven dispuesta a comprar los activos financieros que la gente mayor vende al jubilarse. Si la oferta de activos supera la demanda (más jubilados que jóvenes con capacidad para comprarlos), su precio cae y la pensión se reduce. A falta de leyes sobre qué activos deben adquirir (por ejemplo, bonos públicos para financiar vivienda pública), los sistemas privados internacionalizan esta relación y buscan compradores y vendedores en el extranjero.

Esta internacionalización conlleva riesgos financieros sistémicos, un Estado con menos capacidad de respaldar las inversiones con su moneda, desinversión en bienes públicos y más desigualdad en la propiedad de activos si no se colectivizan. Además, en busca de grandes retornos, el ahorro europeo acaba, con el beneplácito de las autoridades, en las grandes empresas estadounidenses, con muy poca capacidad de hacer estas inversiones social y ecológicamente sostenibles.

Sí, los países nórdicos tienen sistemas de capitalización, pero son obligatorios, colectivos y muchas veces controlados por los sindicatos, y se asientan sobre sistemas públicos y universales que mantienen niveles de pobreza y desigualdad de renta mucho más bajos que los españoles (que no de riqueza, debido justamente a la falta de mecanismos de redistribución de la propiedad).

Ahora bien, que el gasto sea asumible y que los gobiernos de coalición hayan puesto los cimientos para mejorar las condiciones de las mujeres y de quienes menos ingresan no significa que el sistema no pueda mejorar, ni que en estas elecciones no debamos exigir más a los partidos que sí defienden un sistema público.

Por ejemplo, hay que seguir aumentando las prestaciones mínimas desvinculadas de las contribuciones para que todo el mundo tenga sus necesidades cubiertas cuando no pueda trabajar, lo que refuerza la emancipación de la clase trabajadora. El Ingreso Mínimo Vital (IMV) tiene aún mucho margen de mejora: un 55% de los hogares que podrían recibirlo no lo ha solicitado. Además, la brecha de género se reduce muy lentamente y los niveles de pobreza de las mujeres mayores son demasiado elevados (un 18,5% en riesgo de pobreza a partir de los 65 años, frente al 13,7% de los hombres, según el INE), sobre todo porque son ellas las más forzadas a cuidar y dejar de cotizar.

Reconocer en la jubilación el cuidado no remunerado debería ser una prioridad. Hay que mejorar el complemento para la reducción de la brecha de género (solo 37 euros al mes por hijo, que cobran 1,37 millones de pensionistas), ampliar el cómputo de las excedencias por cuidado de hijos y familiares y desfamiliarizar estos mecanismos ante el debilitamiento de los lazos familiares y el aumento de los hogares unipersonales y monoparentales. La reforma de la Ley de Dependencia aprobada en septiembre da un paso al reconocer como cuidadoras a personas del mismo entorno relacional, pero el resto de mecanismos sigue ligado a la maternidad y al parentesco.

Por último, hace falta alejar el ahorro privado de los pensionistas de los nuevos tecnofeudalistas de Silicon Valley y canalizarlo hacia productos financieros públicos y sociales que generen vivienda pública y social. La nueva Cuenta de Ahorro e Inversión Financia Europa, impulsada por Bruselas e incluida en el decreto de vivienda, va en parte en esa dirección al orientar el ahorro hacia empresas europeas, pero debería excluir ventajas fiscales regresivas (o, al menos, tributar cómo los ingresos del trabajo al rescatar la inversión) y prever destinos específicos para la vivienda pública y social.

El 29-N, las clases trabajadoras, incluida la clase media, harían bien en tener en cuenta no solo quién propone garantizar la vivienda, sino también la evidencia sobre la sostenibilidad y la justicia social de las pensiones públicas, y la necesidad de seguir mejorándolas y de destinar el ahorro a fines sociales y no especulativos.

Está disponível mais uma edição do Milénio Stadium!