2023-08-06 09:45:17
Spain continues with a serious productivity problem, which falls again in the last recorded data. It’s not a surprise. Subsidizing low productivity and taxing high productivity does not work. Socialism doesn’t work. Now we read, as if nothing happened, that Sánchez seeks the support of Puigdemont in his investiture in exchange for a removal of the Catalan debt with the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) of more than 21,000 million euros. And the supposed “progressive coalition” is going to perpetrate a new exercise of injustice and negative redistribution: favoring the richest community and having its debt swallowed by the rest of the autonomous communities, harming the poorest much more.
Imagine the face that a voter of the PSOE and Sumar from Extremadura or Asturia could have if they found out that they are going to pay many more taxes and assume more debt so that Puigdemont supports the investiture of Sánchez. What’s more, imagine the faces of the thousands of PSC voters who have chosen that option to stop the independence movement and find themselves even more dependent on the separatists.
The excuse of the separatists with the removal of the debt is to adjust the fiscal deficit, which the Government of the Generalitat estimates at 20,200 million euros, although if we accept that calculation we should also accept that Barcelona has the largest fiscal deficit within Catalonia, that contributes 80% of the income and only receives 65%. As usually happens, the calculation of the fiscal deficit of 20.2 billion euros appears suspiciously inflated and detailed studies warn about the use of different methodologies, since the burden-benefit criterion is used and other times the mixed criterion that is “difficult to interpret at not be a coherent criterion» –Ezequiel Uriel, «The fiscal balances of the autonomous communities»–. According to the load-benefit method reflected in various studies on fiscal balances, Madrid has the largest deficit and is more than double that of Catalonia. Only Madrid, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have a fiscal deficit.
In any case, if we accept the dubious concept of fiscal deficit as a budget negotiation in a state of solidarity, Madrid is the community with the greatest loss between what it contributes and receives and is also the one that contributes more than 70% to the solidarity fund of the communities.
The problem of Catalonia is another. Despite having more autonomy, record income and higher transfers from the State since 2019, the public deficit has quadrupled, from 903 million in 2021 to 3,816 million in 2022. The problem in Catalonia is extractive political spending that is strangling a wealthy and prosperous community. Anyone who thinks that the Government of Catalonia would lower taxes if it had a special regime like the one in the Basque Country has a problem with reality. The Executive of the Generalitat has only raised taxes despite growing in autonomy and access to state financing. And in the Basque Country we have seen how the PNV also wastes its own tax management and maintains an unnecessarily high fiscal effort. Autonomy does not bring less hardship for taxpayers, but unfortunately more bureaucracy and political spending.
Catalonia has a negative balance of 71,852 million euros, the largest debt with the FLA. Madrid, the Basque Country and Navarra refused to join the FLA and, therefore, have no debit or credit balance.
If the Frankenstein coalition agrees to a debt relief for Catalonia, this will mean that the citizens of the Valencian Community, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Asturias or Murcia will see their debt with the FLA increase and they will pay many more taxation. It is ironic that the community most harmed by this favor to the Catalan separatists is one that they include in their imaginary concept of “Catalan Countries”, the Valencian Community. For Madrid, it could mean assuming a debt from a system that it has not accepted and from which it has not benefited (the FLA) and, in any case, more taxes. Because? Because no debt is “removed”. The same is owed, but you and I will pay more.
Sánchez is negotiating a huge tax and debt hike for his voters and all taxpayers in the rest of Spain in exchange for support of separatism at his inauguration. His strategy with the independence movement has had no effect. After pardons, elimination of the crime of sedition and reduction of embezzlement, and billions of transfers and privileges, separatism demands the same thing it has always asked for: amnesty for fugitives and self-determination.
A coalition of socialism and the ultra-left, which has spent years talking about harmonization and equity, all it does is increase the privileges and differences of wealthy communities as long as their representatives in Congress support them. They have done it with the Basque Country and they are doing it now. And you think that’s progressivism.
#Catalonias #debt #removal #means #taxes #debt