The Chilean elite is delaying the changes that began before the pandemic.

Chilean economist Marco Kremerman participated on April 21 in the “Virtual Conversation on Social Security and Pension System” which brought together experts from several countries in the region.

Kremerman, a researcher at Fundación SOL specializing in inequality, wages, social security, and education, told CLACSO TV that “the pandemic has produced two opposing effects: on the one hand, it exposes the failure of neoliberal policies and their endangerment of people's lives, as the precariousness that existed before the pandemic is making it difficult for them to stay home and take care of themselves without relying on their personal savings. But at the same time, the political groups and elites that define the Chilean model have further entrenched themselves, adopting a more extreme position precisely to delay the changes that could have been, and were, taking place before the pandemic.”

Interviewed by Gustavo Lema

Organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES Argentina), the Argentine Institute for Economic Development (IADE), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), and the CLACSO Working Group on Social Security and Pension Systems, the First Conversation “Pandemic and Social Security in Latin America. Impacts and Responses. More Welfare State?” conducted a diagnosis of the impact of Covid-19 on Social Security in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay and a survey of the response of national governments.

The discussion was introduced by Karina Batthyány (CLACSO), Svenja Blanke (FES), and Sergio Carpenter (IADE), and moderated by Nicolás Dvoskin (IADE, Social Security and Pension Systems Working Group). Presentations were given by Roxana Mazzola (FLACSO - Argentina), Rosa María Marques (Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil), Marco Kremerman (Fundación Sol - Chile), Berenice Ramírez (UNAM - Mexico), and Hugo Bai (PIT-CNT - Uruguay).