“This is worth watching. What good would it be if you had more of your salary left over at the end of the month? He really said that. Before the elections. Make sure to watch the video again, and it will become perfectly clear to you where we are,” former Prime Minister Janez Janša commented on the recording of a conversation with Robert Golob, reminding everyone just how out of touch the left-wing privatisers are with Slovenian reality. Apparently, the current Prime Minister does not understand that one of the “stupid things,” for which more than 211 thousand Slovenians, who live below the poverty line and whose wallets will also suffer under the new tax legislation, are “wasting” their money on, is food.
Just how far out of touch with Slovenian reality the left-wing privatisers really are, was recently illustrated by Martin Odlazek’s Večer newspaper, in which they wrote: “Now that inflation is holding us by the scruff of our necks, let’s not panic. This is the advice of those of us who lived through Marković’s inflation at the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia, survived it by some miracle, even laughed about it, and had a good time.” In making this statement, they were probably referring to a book by a Croatian author entitled “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,” but many people did not actually laugh at all, not to mention the fact that many did not survive communism either.
“This is just my personal opinion, but I believe we really do not need lower taxes,” said Robert Golob before the elections, who also said that more money in his account would do him no good – except that he would waste it on even more stupid things. “One can rightly wonder who is the biggest phenomenon – the candidate for the position of prime minister who makes such a statement, or the people who elected him,” reads one of the comments on social media regarding Golob’s statement in question, even though some people also consider Golob to be a man of his word. “He did keep his promise, though – he raised taxes immediately. He said it would happen, and people voted for him anyway. If you, Mr Janša, would have said such a thing, that would result in a coup d’état with mass protests. That is how well the left-wing media propaganda works.”
And another user wrote: “Let’s say that the voters really do want lower wages because, for example, they prefer to go mushroom picking. This was also confirmed by their trade unions. But the tax burden on highly educated, deficit human resources is particularly fatal, as we are competing directly with the global world here, and there is no mercy in that arena. We are cutting our own veins!”
“If the government of Janez Janša had not lowered the taxes, that would have had an even bigger effect on the tenants,” economist Dr Anže Burger explained to the left-wing non-governmental organisation the Institute of the 8th of March (Inštitut 8. marec), adding that if the tax is increased, at least part of it will be passed on to rents, meaning – to the tenants. Namely, Nika Kovač’s Institute erroneously claimed that “rental prices are not any lower, even though the Janša government reduced the tax paid by landlords on the rent they receive from 27.5 percent to 15 percent in the March tax reform, giving even more to those who already have the most.”
Anže Burger also believes that Golob’s tax reform is actually more of an anti-reform: “The new tax legislation proposal goes in the wrong direction. The previous regime was more appropriate because it reduced the tax burden on labour since, in Slovenia, we have trouble staying competitive. We are not succeeding in any way in becoming an attractive location for jobs with higher added value and higher wages because, as far as the tax burden is concerned, we are too expensive. This anti-reform that is now underway is another step in the wrong direction; it is definitely bad for the long-term development of Slovenia,” the professor explained.
Sara Kovač
