The final interview Read here all the installments of the Contra of 'El Mundo'
1964, Madrid.
Professor of History and Economic Institutions at the CEU-San Pablo University.
Together with Carlos Rodríguez Braun and Luis Daniel Ávila,
we are all
firm
, honey
(Deusto), about "how they trick us into believing that we pay little and for our own good."
Are we all the Treasury, as the famous advertising campaign used to say? Well, no. Finance is a department within a government. It is one of the state institutions and its objective is to collect money from citizens based on what the government mandate decides. The Treasury is not all of us but, yes, the Treasury collects from everyone. In their book they analyze the different Treasury campaigns and their mechanisms to convince us that paying taxes is a good thing and that it benefits everyone. Is it that paying taxes is not good and does not benefit everyone? Honestly, I would love to answer yes. But I'm not so sure. My daughter, when she was very little and went to school, always told me: "If education is such a good thing, why is it mandatory to go to school?" And with taxes, the same logic works a bit. Why do they have to spend so much money to convince us, especially through fallacies, that it is all for our good, that we are all the Treasury? Why do they have to use manipulation when paying taxes is already coercive? Where all this leads us is to think that taxes are necessary. And they are not? I am not going to say that there are public services that are not necessary. I believe that everyone should have an education, that everyone should have access to healthcare, and so on. Now, another thing is how those services and goods are provided and financed, which are public in the sense that they should be for everyone, not in the sense that they should be provided by the State. I personally miss that public spending impact studies are not put on the table, knowing what they do with your euros, with mine and especially with those of the middle class, which is on the way to extinction. I said before that the State resorts to fallacies to convince us of the goodness of paying taxes. Can you give me an example? The first would be "We are all the Treasury", but the book is full of examples. We have traced the records of Radio Televisión Española and have searched everywhere to find the most terrible slogans. When democracy arrived, for example, the slogan was: "Now we are all the Treasury." And there are many more cases: "Declare the truth", "Money back and forth", "Give new energy to development". This last slogan suggests that taxes generate development. But, fortunately, economists know that it is not the State or taxes that give life to development. What gives life to development is that wages are high enough for people to have purchasing power, that there are levels of investment, that we have production that can be sold to the market ... It is very simplistic and very fallacious. to say that the taxes that people pay serve to give new life to development. Another example: when it is put on the table that if a person does not pay taxes, there will be one less hospital bed. And that is not exactly the case, because not only the decision to enter but also the spending decision is made by the public powers, and there is no such immediate association. But, in doing so, they try to create a bad conscience. However, it is the public authorities that do not set an example, do not even account for where the tax money goes. And what do you want with this book? What we try is to remove consciences, regardless of the ideology or way of thinking of whoever reads it. Make the reader wonder why, systematically, all governments manipulate, create advertisements and use the grossest propaganda to create a bad conscience in citizens if they do not pay taxes. And all that, when there is no accountability. What amazes me is that people admit to being coerced and thrown in jail if they do not pay their taxes, but that politicians are not subjected to the same demand regarding accountability. Socially, tax crime is considered a terrible thing. Anyone who commits tax crimes is publicly singled out and humiliated. Is it fair that it should be so? Let's see: the tax crime is a crime, that is imperative, and committing a crime is wrong. Now, to me that social signaling attracts my attention, especially if you stop to think about what kind of crime the tax crime is. The fraudster, the tax criminal, is identified as the worst in society, someone with little solidarity, and so on. But in reality he is a man who has not handed over what is his. In this country we don't quite understand that the effort of your work is yours. It is true that there are laws that oblige you, under penalty of jail, to hand over to the State what the State considers appropriate. Okay, okay. But the fraudster, I insist, is not delivering something that is not his, something that he has stolen. He is a man who refuses to hand over something that is his. And next to that we can have a man who is willing to pay what the State decides he should pay, but it seems wrong and then he goes to another place, changes his tax residence, something perfectly legal. And that man is also pointed out.There is a school of economics called Public Choice that has studied, among other things, what are the formulas to express discontent in democracy, the famous
exit and voice
by Buchanan, Nobel Prize in Economics, which is summarized in that discontent can be expressed by leaving or protesting.
There are many ways to protest, from the mildest to the most violent.
But the other formula, the exit, the fiscal exile, is also frowned upon.
So does it seem right to you that El Rubius has moved his tax residence to Andorra to pay less taxes?
What I think is that now with El Rubius, a legion has come out to harass and demolish a young man who is a youtuber and who has decided to have his tax residence elsewhere because here he suffocates.
Why does this point have to be made?
The moral signal, when it comes to taxes, is precisely due to this manipulation by the State that we denounce in the book.
Perhaps what happens is that those who can afford to change their tax residence are those with the highest incomes, while the rest of society cannot even think about it ... I can't think about it either.
But we must bear in mind that the cost of leaving and being a tax exile is equal to or similar to the cost of emigrating, and no one, no one thinks of morally pointing out an emigrant, the young man who leaves because he does not have any here work.
Emigrating is not free, it has a huge emotional and economic cost.
And those who emigrate are not pointed out, because we all understand that we are in a terrible situation and that the young and the not so young have every right to seek opportunities in another country.
I would love for El Rubius to stay and pay taxes here, but I don't think you shouldn't lynch him, but rather consider what should be done to retain him and others.
In your opinion, are taxes in Spain high?
This is not my opinion.
You just have to look at the data on fiscal suffering and tax burden compared to other countries.
If we look at our levels of everything, we have a very high tax burden, a very high tax effort is required of us.
I am referring to the weight of taxes, not on GDP, but on the purchasing power of citizens.
And not only to the working population.
It is very difficult to live for a self-employed person, who is an entrepreneur himself and who is the refuge of the majority of the unemployed, especially the young unemployed.
The tax treatment of the self-employed is a shame, and now in times of pandemic much more.
You also have to think that those who create jobs are companies.
Spain is a country of micro-businesses, why don't we have larger companies beyond the Ibex?
Because the average businessman, the small and medium businessman, cannot grow any more because there are huge taxes that prevent their own investment.
I am horribly angry that foreign investors have to come because we have not created an investment mentality here.
To begin here, being rich is horrible, it is morally degrading, something that I cannot understand because there are good rich people and there are bad poor people, goodness and badness are distributed throughout the population.
But also, the desire to improve and get rich is not well seen either.
It is very difficult to defend having such high taxes when the economic fabric here is what it is and the economic mentality is medieval.
However, in history, there have been very heavy taxes and nothing has happened.
I'm thinking of America: Roosevelt raised taxes on large fortunes to about 94%, and earlier Hoover did it to 63%.
Sometimes it may be necessary, don't you think?
It seems to me that raising taxes to those levels is directly confiscating other people's property.
What should be asked in that case is whether this is a society that is willing to not respect the private property of some citizens.
And if that is so, let's make it clear, let's put it on the table.
I personally believe that Roosevelt made that raise because, among other things, he had a spending plan, the
New Deal
.
Sometimes you have to raise taxes, yes.
But all the times?
What they are selling us is that it is always necessary and that only the State is capable of offering services and goods, of solving things.
What has been inoculating us for years is not having confidence in the economic structure, in the business muscle and in the economic muscle of the Spanish.
But taxes necessarily have to be coercive, because if they were volunteers, nobody would pay them ... If they were volunteers, obviously not everyone would pay.
But why do we have to assume that only citizens are not angels?
And on the contrary: we assume that the rulers are angels, that they are the ones who manage taxes, decide and make the decision of what taxes to demand and to whom.
I admit that citizens are not angels and that we must force ourselves to pay taxes, because otherwise many would not pay.
But I demand that the rulers be considered in the same way.
And rulers of many parties - right, left, center, top and bottom - when using public services such as health, education, etc.
they turn to private companies.
They are in their perfect right, but when you proclaim the goodness of public services and use private ones, you are sending a very contradictory message.
But this pandemic has highlighted the importance of public health, right?
For me, it has highlighted the importance that when there is a catastrophe, the public sector and the private sector must work at full capacity, 100%, to solve such a serious problem.
It is true that public health is very important, with which it has been played politically for many years, as with education.
But it is also true that we have a private health sector that has been collaborating and that has also done things.
I am very ashamed when on social networks I read things about the discrimination between private and public health, as if private hospitals were fewer hospitals and should be ignored in the face of the solution to the pandemic.
And the same goes for education.
It is negative, when there is a pandemic, to oppose public services and private services.
And what would be the tolerable tax burden?
I could not say exactly a number, but one that allows people not to have to leave in order to develop.
And of course, apart from having a tolerable fiscal pressure, the efficiency of public spending should be reviewed and there should be accountability on the part of those who manage our euros.
From my point of view, where the money is best is in the pocket of the citizens.
Of course, you have to finance certain things together.
But we have to ask ourselves what is inefficient about the Spanish State, what is inefficient about the autonomous administrations and how can we eliminate that fat that sclerotizes the reaction capacity of our administrations.
I believe that we Spaniards must demand it, and we are not demanding it.
Why are there no social protests about taxes? In history there have been wars over taxes, it is normal, when people can no longer rebel.
And not now, and that is surprising.
And why are there no protests right now?
It's not that I just like protests.
But it is surprising that there are no protests about taxes when in the past, and you don't have to go very far, taxes were the main cause for people to go out on the street and we all came together.
The lower middle classes do not make ends meet and there are people who have to take out loans to pay taxes, and that is a shame, you cannot consent.
And yet nobody claims.
The conclusion we have reached after investigating is that there are no protests against the rhetoric that has been put into our heads.
And to that is added that in Spain a partisan mentality has been imposed on society, so if someone agrees that the tax be eliminated, but a party that is not theirs proposes it, that someone prefers to remain silent.
It seems aberrant to me that we citizens end up absorbed by the partisan mentality.
Shouldn't there be taxes on big fortunes?
I do not think so.
I know it is very unpopular, because it seems that whoever has more has to contribute more.
What happens is that the word to contribute right now exclusively means to give to the Government, to give to the State and refers to a person, the rich man.
A person who has a company is contributing to society, giving jobs, creating economic activity, and it is very necessary for that to happen.
The fallacy is to think that contributing to society is exclusively paying money to the State, paying more taxes, because it is assumed that all goods and services, the solution to all problems, is provided by the State.
And it is not true.
If you invest in a company, for your own benefit because nobody works for free, you are also creating jobs, you are generating economic activity and you are attracting more investors, you are generating talent and creating incentives for others.
But it is misunderstood that a person who earns stratospheric figures pays the same percentage as someone who is asphyxiated every month ... Ideally, wealth should be created so that the person who is asphyxiated does not go asphyxiated.
What I demand is that economic wealth be generated so that everyone has a salary as high as possible and that people can generate wealth as far as they are capable.
It's about where you put the focus.
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