By: Ricardo Abud

Venezuela is no longer just facing a political, economic, and social crisis. It is also experiencing a profound moral crisis. When a country accepts that a pensioner receives a mere 17 cents a month, the issue is no longer simply poverty: it becomes abandonment. 

No one can live on that amount of money. It's not even enough to buy a bottle of water. It would take 5.88 monthly pensions to accumulate just one dollar. In other words, a senior citizen would have to wait almost six months to receive the equivalent of one dollar.

Meanwhile, a teacher at a private high school, at best, can earn around $2 an hour. Even that income, already insufficient to cover the cost of living, highlights the immense gap with those who survive on a pension. How can a nation aspire to a future when those who educate its youth and those who built the country live in such precarious conditions?

Faced with this reality, advertisements appear for a VIP cinema (much more expensive than any cinema in the US, where prices are charged in dollars) where a ticket costs $25 . A simple popcorn and soda combo reaches $24, and if it's a special edition, like the Spider-Man one, the price can go up to $50. That is, a single movie ticket costs the equivalent of more than 147 monthly pensions, while a special combo represents almost 294 months of pension, nearly 24 and a half years of income for a retiree.

The existence of VIP lounges and the fact that some people can afford them are not being criticized. What is truly outrageous is the obscene disparity between those prices and the reality faced by millions of Venezuelans. This gap reveals a country divided into two worlds that barely intersect: one where tens of dollars are paid for a few hours of entertainment and another where millions cannot even guarantee their next meal.

The contradiction is all the more painful considering how little time has passed since a tragedy that left countless families in utter destitution. Many people lost their homes, their belongings, and their peace of mind. Yet, while some continue trying to rebuild their lives from the rubble, social media is flooded with content that celebrates luxury and consumerism as if extreme poverty were a trivial matter.

This disconnect is also evident in everyday commerce. In Catia, for example, it's not uncommon to find vendors trying to charge $90 for a pair of shoes, claiming they are authentic. For a Venezuelan pensioner, that amount represents more than 529 months of pension, or over 44 years of income. It's such an absurd figure that it ceases to be a market problem and becomes a portrait of an economy completely disconnected from the reality of its population.

The most worrying thing isn't just the numbers. It's the indifference. It's that these inequalities are starting to be seen as normal. It's that society is no longer outraged that an elderly person can't live on their pension, that a teacher doesn't receive a decent wage, or that the average citizen has to choose between eating and covering any other basic need.

A society is not measured by the luxury displayed by a few, but by the dignity with which the most vulnerable live. And when 17 cents a month is considered a pension, while entertainment costs 25 or 50 dollars, the problem can no longer be explained solely by economic indicators. It reflects an ethical breakdown that threatens to normalize what should never be accepted.

No country can call itself just while a pensioner needs almost six months to save a single dollar, and at the same time, a single afternoon of entertainment costs dozens of times more than everything they will receive in years. This is not merely economic inequality. It is evidence that Venezuela needs to recover not only its stability but also its moral conscience.

THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIONARY THAN BEING POOR.

Note: Some will respond that pensioners receive a $70 war bonus. It is true that this bonus exists, but it is also true that it does not constitute a salary or pension. It is a bonus that may temporarily alleviate the income of the recipient, but it has no bearing on labor or social security rights. It cannot be used to calculate social benefits, vacation pay, profit sharing, severance pay, or other benefits derived from the employment relationship. The legal minimum wage remains frozen at 130 bolivars, equivalent to approximately 17 or 18 cents of a dollar, and it is this paltry sum that continues to be the basis for all these calculations. In other words, the State can announce increasingly larger bonuses, but as long as the minimum wage remains reduced to a few cents of a dollar, the labor rights of millions of Venezuelans will continue to be built on a legal and economic fiction.