Governments care about discriminated minorities, immigrants, the poor, and the upper classes don’t need help. On the other hand, the middle classes, the majority of society, with diminishing expectations, feel that no one takes them into account and express their discomfort at the polls. Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, summed up the evil of our time like this at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2017.
Emmanuel Macron, who feels the breath of the extreme right on the nape of his neck, seems to want to respond to the aphorism and has announced a plan to help this middle class, those who “earn too much to be helped and not enough to live well” . It remains to be seen how concretely and where the French president gets the funds to achieve this, while the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is demanding more military spending, ergo less social spending.
Manel Pérez pointed out in this newspaper on Sunday that Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s Madrid has found the formula to sustain its liberal policy – everyone pays for their own things – with a compensatory tax policy. The community can apply it, in part, due to the fiscal solidarity with the rest of Spain.
In Catalonia, on the other hand, the complication of the financing system does not allow it, and independence, arm in arm with socialism, instead of using its deputies to improve it, has entered the umpteenth battle – the amnesty—, very legitimate, but which he cannot win, not even by passing the law. The criminal case for terrorism opened yesterday by the Supreme Court against President Carles Puigdemont and deputy Ruben Wagensberg leaves no doubt.
The mutual needs of the ERC and the PSC have saved the sainet of the previous year in the negotiation of the budgets. If the commons practice the responsibility that Jéssica Albiach bragged about exercising when Ada Colau needed Esquerraper in their accounts, the approval will be positive, without a doubt. Despite this, the draft budget of the Generalitat is accompanied by increases in the water rate that will have an impact, once again, on the citizens that Summers was talking about.
The incentive to save water and the application of progressivity in the payment of consumption is very commendable. But even if it is a few euros, the middle classes cannot feel that they are paying for the lack of planning on the water issue of past and present governments. Nor is the increase in public spending on health and education of any use if these citizens assume that “the others” are the main beneficiaries.
In Madrid, cheating taxation allows the middle class to dream of progress thanks to individual effort. In Catalonia, on the other hand, the impossibility of practicing it, and the fiscal pressure, means that the regulars have to row a lot to keep their heads up. The fear of a certain ultra-right will not always keep the left in power.
