According to real inflation, the lowest pension should be 36,900 liras

TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) announced the December inflation rate as 1.03 percent. The inflation for the last 6 months is said to be 15.75 percent... And the annual inflation is 44.38 percent... If you believe it...

We don't believe it, but we are paying the price. Salaries, wages, and pensions are all calculated based on this incorrectly measured inflation figure from TÜİK.

The December inflation rate of ENAG, which consists of independent economists and uses the same products that TÜİK uses in its inflation calculation, is 2.34 percent, while the annual inflation is 83.40 percent...

Since the beginning of January 2022, I have been measuring the inflation I personally experience by weighting the goods and services in my own consumption basket, rather than using the goods and services in the TÜİK basket and their weightings. I call it the MERİÇ K inflation. Every month, one day before ENAG and TÜİK, I share it on my Facebook, X, and Youtube accounts. According to my measurements, my December inflation was 3.08 percent, and the annual inflation was 86.38 percent.

My inflation basket belongs to me. It does not reflect the entire society. But it shows the level of the general change in prices. For this reason, I think the real inflation Turkey is experiencing is the 83.40 percent measured by ENAG.

My argument is as follows:

We have had two inflation data sets since January 2020. One is TÜİK, the other is ENAG... That is why I am going back to January 2020.

In the period since January 2020, the general price level has increased 6-fold according to TÜİK. The 5-year inflation has been 507 percent.

According to ENAG, the general price level has increased 24.6-fold since January 2020. The five-year cumulative inflation has been 2363 percent.

According to TÜİK's latest announcement, if the President does not make a new regulation, the lowest pension will be 14,469 liras. Now let's look at it according to the inflation we have experienced over the last 5 years.

In this case, the level that the lowest pension, which was 1500 liras in January, should be at the beginning of 2025 is 9000 liras according to TÜİK... In other words, the AKP has increased the living standards of retirees through the efforts of TÜİK. This is what both the President and Mehmet Şimşek are saying. But is it real? Retirees are even longing for the year 2020, which they were not satisfied with at the time.

According to ENAG inflation, the lowest pension needs to be 36,875 liras to reach the purchasing power of the 1500 liras in January 2020. (1500 x 24.6 = 36,900)

In democratic countries where individuals are free citizens rather than subjects, there is a dialectic in the state-citizen relationship that always moves society forward. For this, society must demand its rights within the framework of democratic rules and determine politics accordingly. Otherwise, in a society that does not seek its rights and is content with what is given, economic misery becomes widespread. A handful of people get rich. Instead of "free individuals," society becomes the "subjects/serfs of an authoritarian regime."

Retirees are not a burden on the back of a society; they are the true owners who built that society. I wrote this in 12 Punto on December 17, 2023.

Three great philosophers of three different schools of thought, living 100 years apart, defined "the source of wealth as accumulated labor." In addition to the premiums they paid during their working lives, retirees are also the owners of all the wealth created by the public budget in this country. It is useful to repeat some ideas for them to become widespread. A summary from the article on December 17, 2023:

J. LOCKE, A. SMITH, K. MARX AND RETIREES

The philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), the founder of liberalism, the European Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason, and the source of inspiration for the English, American, and French Revolutions, sees labor as the source of property, and therefore of wealth.

Living about 100 years later, the philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), the theorist of the capitalist economy (not the founder, but the theorist who explained the functioning of an existing system in a systematic and scientific way), sees labor as the source of wealth within the scope of the labor theory of value he developed.

Living about 100 years after Adam Smith, the philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883), the theorist of the socialist economy, developed Adam Smith's labor theory of value to criticize capitalism and defined the source of profit and wealth as the surplus value created by labor.

The views of three philosophers who lived a hundred years apart and were theorists of different systems of thought all lead to the same conclusion. Labor, and therefore retirees, have undeniable rights to all wealth created. And given their age, retirees are holding the short end of the stick, not the long end. Expecting patience from retirees is a great injustice.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND RETIREES

For strong individual rights and a strong social state, it is necessary to define public ownership and communal (social) ownership. The legitimate source of these rights is the principle of equality of citizens and the definition of communal (social) ownership.

The principle of equality of citizens is not limited to legal matters. A country's natural resources, such as its seas, rivers, lakes, plains, mines, and pastures, belong to all citizens of that country and cannot be used as a source of profit (privilege) for a small group.

Furthermore, based on the definition of the three great philosophers mentioned above that "the source of wealth is labor," the communal (social) ownership of all public infrastructure, roads, highways, power plants, dams, electricity distribution networks, telecommunications infrastructure, satellites in the sky, all investments made by the state, and the gains obtained, belong equally to the citizens of that country. It doesn't end there; rents such as zoning rents that emerge through various laws and regulations are also the equal right of the citizens of that country, not a handful of privileged people.

Behind all these rights are citizens who worked, then retired, continue to work, or even if they don't work, pay the price in the face of high inflation and subsidize the state's infrastructure investments or private sector investments with negative interest rates, land, in-kind and cash public incentives.

In short, just as an entrepreneur receives a share of company profits as a shareholder when they retire and hand over their business to their family or professionals, all retirees, all taxpayers, and all citizens who pay the price with inflation should receive a share of the gains arising from these public assets.

To give an example...

You cannot sell internet services to the public for money using telecommunications infrastructure that we all financed at the time by paying taxes or by enduring high inflation. The service fee here cannot be transferred to companies as profit. It should be priced by the public at a level that ensures the continuation of the service. The same applies to electricity distribution and all natural assets, especially the mines we own.

Public ownership belongs to all of us by virtue of the principle of equality of citizens, not to a clique that has seized power and their cronies, and the first to benefit from these assets should be the labor and retirees who constitute the source of wealth.

We should not be content with what is given; we must demand our rights.