Pensions to Kill For

In Brazil, pensions are so generous that people are ready to kill to get one!  The current government is desperate to reform the pay-as-you-go pension system, which is a drag on public resources.  Brazilians do not see it that way, and they have been rioting in the thousands to preserve their perks.  Too many workers choose to retire in their 50s with full benefits, receiving too much money for too little contribution.  The retirement check is usually equal to the last salary, and many people can collect multiple pensions.

Because the Brazilian population is aging and no longer breeding (the birth rate is under the replacement level) the pension system is collapsing under the weight of its own largess.  In 2017, this geriatric generosity cost about 10% of GDP and the national debt is ballooning at 98% of GDP.  The State of Rio de Janeiro is a case in point.  It is broke, bankrupted by its pension obligations.  It supports more pensioners than working public servants!

Widows and widowers commonly inherit the full pension of their deceased spouses and until last year could enjoy their pension for life even if they remarried.  Brazil is also very generous with significant others:  a two-year domestic partnership is enough to entitle the surviving person to full pension benefits.  Many Brazilian retirees see their government pension as a benefit to be kept in the family after their death.  Close to their deathbed, charitable singles or widowers routinely marry younger women, or their niece, cousin or even maid to ensure that their pension helps someone dear to them.  It is known as the “Viagra effect.” 

The pension system of military personnel is even more big-hearted: daughters get a lifetime pension as long as they do not marry.  The system has obviously been perverted.  With regard to this law, military daughters are all single mothers courageously raising their brood.  Dutiful fathers and partners are kept hidden.  

Not surprisingly, this generous system has generated a deadly pension-fraud business with guns for hire, seedy lawyers, corrupt public servants and crooked funeral professionals.  The scenario is simple: a young person a gold digger, or a piranha as they are known in Brazil, marries a pensioner and will do her or his utmost to speed his passing in order to pocket the coveted vitae pension.  Murdering for pensions is so common in Brazil that newspapers only report the most sordid or salacious cases. 

The plot is basic and unimaginative: the young wife enlists her lover or lovers to kill her Viagra husband.  Sometimes, gold diggers can be men, like the young fellow who married his aunt, killed her and hid her body for months while pocketing her pension.  Recently, the murder of the Greek ambassador to Brazil made headlines.  His younger Brazilian wife had him murdered by her policeman lover.  The husband was stabbed to death and his body burned with the help of an accomplice.  The crime had been premeditated; the police believe that the pair’s motives were of a financial nature rather than a crime of passion.

To stop the murders but principally to save money, the government has started to change the rules.  It has taken a stab at the Viagra effect issue.  Now, the younger the wife, the shorter the pension. Wives whose age is between 22 and 27 will only receive a pension for six years.  If younger than 21, the pension is reduced to three years!  Wives older than 44, will keep benefiting until their own death, but will no longer received the full pension. 

Since 2000, the daughters of military officers no longer receive a lifetime pension; however as benefits cannot be withdrawn, it only applies to new entrants.  Nearly 200,000 military daughters still pocket their fathers’ pensions.

Pension reform is unpopular everywhere, but in Brazil is has become a battleground.  Public servants who have most to lose have been rioting against the government proposal.  Even before facing the skittish congress, the government proposal has been watered down.  Prospects for passing a money-saving bill do not look good. 

Oddly, Brazilian pensioners may prefer to risk a violent death than to age frugally.

President Temer and his 40 years younger wife  Marcela