There is a Spain – and a Catalonia – that wants to pay less tax and another that expects to collect more subsidies. You can already guess which parties each one votes for; but what brings more votes to these politicians when they command: increase subsidies or reduce the percentage of what we tax?
Until now it seemed that taking care of Spain with the subsidy was more electorally profitable than easing the salary fiscally, which he now calculates: “Every year I work for free until June so that the Treasury keeps it”. But demography is the destiny of peoples and that of Spain is changing.
In each election, the Spain of the salary was more and more numerous than the one of the subsidy and less abstentionist at the polls. For this reason, the PSOE and the left are losing community after community.
Thanks to the demographic slowdown – it’s demography, smartass! -, the percentage of unemployment has fallen to less than half in the last ten years; and, even if wages remain low, humans have evolved to regret more what we think is being taken from us today than what we would lose if we were fired. The same happens when it is published that less personal income tax or no inheritance tax is paid in the neighboring autonomous community. And this is one of the secrets of Ayuso’s victories in a Madrid where the majority of those who will always vote have a flat or expect to inherit it.
We end up listening with our hearts to what our pockets are telling us until we get to the polls. And it tells us more to pay less when we get paid today, than to stop receiving if we were fired tomorrow.
And it is that, velis nolis, the material conditions of our existence end up determining the ideological ones. And the rest: charisma of prominent leaders, love of the homeland or hatred of the outsider or History – nothing more treacherous than our own memory – are readjusted to reinforce the story that suits us.
And now he is counting personal income tax percentages and their correlation with votes.
