By: Jože Biščak
Milton Friedman, an American economist and Nobel laureate, published the book Free to Choose with his wife Rose more than four decades ago. In it, as a man who knew how to “translate” the most brilliant Mises and Hayek free-market ideas into language understandable to everyone, he explained four ways of spending money: (first) you spend your money for yourself, (second) you spend your money for someone else, (third) you are wasting someone else’s money for yourself and (fourth) spending someone else’s money on someone else.
By far the most efficient use of money is when we spend our money for ourselves, and the least efficient when we spend foreign money for others. The first and second ways of spending usually apply to individuals (private individuals), the third and fourth to the state. The fact is (as history and studies confirm) that it is by far the best for people and consequently the economy if their money is managed by individuals, not government officials or politicians. This was also the purpose of the amendments to the Personal Income Tax Act, which would bring higher net salaries to a large part of Slovenes, and the state would have less money to manage and redistribute it.
In countries where trade unions actually operate independently of politics and, above all, for the greater well-being of workers, such a decision by the authorities would, of course, be welcomed, probably even credited. But in Slovenia, where the trade union elite has been connected with the egalitarian leftist ideology for almost 80 years, this is not the case. Therefore, the reaction of Lidija Jerkič is not strange, the head of the ZSSS, who could not answer the question why the unions oppose the increase in workers’ wages. “In any way, I am thinking about how to explain why we are not very excited about such a change, which brings in a higher net income, I do not know. I cannot easily explain to a man why we are against it now, if his salary will be higher,” she said on national radio.
The workers’ salaries will be raised by the center-right Janša government
No matter how hard I try to understand her words, I do not find a rational explanation, I always come to the same conclusion: it is wrong, because lower-wage workers will be given a higher salary by the center-right government. Or worse – the Janša government. It would be really tasteless, detrimental to agitprop, if the unions were now enthusiastic about the team from Gregorčič, which the left-wing opposition and the media mainstream portray as totalitarian, and its Prime Minister as a dictator, right? With the income tax law, the unions had an extraordinary opportunity to show that they understand their mission, which does not look at the ideology in power, but they proved once again that, with Jerkič at the helm, they are as effective as speed barriers to the way to higher wages for their membership. Under the guise of protecting employees, the unions are actually harming them.
The left part of politics, which obstructed the parliamentary session, in contrast to the unions (otherwise with foam at the mouth) at least “tried” to explain why they oppose tax cuts: because the state will have less money and because reducing the burden on people with higher incomes will nominally bring them more than those with lower incomes. Although the fact is that in the higher pay grade (where the greatest added value is created) they will continue to pay much more than in the lower. Although the fact is that in the higher pay grade (where the greatest added value is created) they will continue to pay much more than in the lower.
Wallets will only be safe if you vote for the right in the election
But leftists would not be what they are if they did not demand even tougher progressive taxation, which only leads to a dictatorship of socialist-minded and enlightened elites. Their ideas do not work anywhere. Egalitarianism, Friedman argued, putting it before freedom brings neither equality nor freedom as opposed to societies to which freedom is most sacred and in the first place, so they have both. The progressive tax is in fact regressive, inequality, which we recognise as second-class, is most widespread in socialist-prone countries, and the “noble” mission of wage equality is a well-paved path to hell.
So when unions and leftists talk about taxes and your wages, hold on tight to your wallets and defend them by all means. The easiest way to defend them is to vote for the right in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Jože Biščak is the editor-in-chief of the conservative-oriented magazine Demokracija, president of the Slovenian Association of Patriotic Journalists and author of the books Zgodbe iz Kavarne Hayek, Zapisi konservativnega liberalca and Potovati z Orwellom.