Budget cuts: Sheinbaum's unexpected signature policy

This isn’t your grandpa’s Republican Austerity.

It’ll start off as an additional $13.8 billion pesos ($690 million dollars) to Mexico’s yearly tab. From there, the number will only grow, since this is the cost of the first phase of president Claudia Sheinbaum’s pension for women between 63 and 64. (Over-65s already get one.) The plan is to gradually roll out the benefit to the swelling ranks of women over 60.

The policy was then-president elect Sheinbaum’s first truly proprietary proposal. It was couched in feminist rhetoric, but the president’s strategy is far more wide sweeping. To one analyst that The Mexico Political Economist spoke to, it looks like the road to a universal basic income travelled in baby steps. 

It at times may certainly feel that way: