The current big fuss over authoritarian pension slashing—the reality is Taiwan will soon go bankrupt, and Tsai Ing-wen and Lin Quanzhuan are at a loss about what to do.
Even renowned American scholars have been surprised that after a few months of Tsai Ing-wen’s governance, she still hasn’t presented any economic and social reform plans whatsoever.
This has forced the Tsai Ing-wen government to start targeting traditional “non-voting bloc” military personnel, civil servants, teachers and police, planning to squeeze these retired elderly to make the economic numbers look better.
Internet personality Li Guangyi pointed out that he doesn’t support the Tsai Ing-wen government deliberately creating two propositions during the pension controversy:
- First, that reform is for “intergenerational justice”;
- Second, that military and civil service personnel are “vested interests” and thus have no right to protest.
For military, civil service and police, the existing system is the government’s promise—it’s the “status quo,” not a game these people wrote the rules for themselves.
Now it’s the government unilaterally changing the status quo, not military, civil service and police personnel!
The government should explain itself too, not military, civil service and police personnel!
Are those defending their own homes from being demolished also ‘vested interests’?
Li Guangyi continues with an example: someone owes you a million yuan, a written contract has them repaying you 10,000 monthly with 20% annual interest. After a year of payment, they’re going bankrupt and can’t keep up, requesting to pay 3,000 monthly instead with only 3% interest and half of remaining debt forgiven. Would refusing make you “unjust to the next generation” or a “greedy vested interest”?
Cutting military, civil service and police pension benefits is just about “sharing the burden” and “making sacrifices for the nation”—no intergenerational justice involved, and definitely not about who’s a vested interest (unless we’re counting that former president surnamed Tsai who cursed the 18% [pension bonus] while receiving it…).
The absurdity is that “making sacrifices for the nation” suddenly seems reasonable now, and progressive young people won’t speak up about it either. If you’re demanding people make sacrifices for the nation while calling them greedy, then of course people should protest.
The current rulers wouldn’t dare say this, but while gaining power they never hesitated to say it. Even now, such rhetoric abounds.