August 31, 2018
Mladina defends higher taxation of capital gains
The STA reports that in its latest editorial the left-wing weekly Mladina defends the new coalition's plan to include capital gains in income tax calculations and attacks popular media for platforming "theatrical entrepreneurs" who speak about the subject without any real knowledge.
Editor-in-chief Grega Repovž says the media are opting for entrepreneurs that provide a show and not for heads of major companies who see the entire picture. This causes serious damage, spreads hysteria in the public and economy, and is tantamount to intentional spreading of lies.
The average Slovenian who lives off of his work pays 34% of his income to the state to help provide invaluable public infrastructure, healthcare, subsidised kindergartens ... as well as incentives for business.
Meanwhile, Janez Janša's 2004-2008 government pushed through a cut of the tax burdens for the wealthy, who also live off of rents and capital – on average they only pay a tax of 20.2% on this revenue. There is no real reason for this taxation disparity, apart from the power and money the wealthy used to successfully lobby with politicians.
It is not clear where exactly Ivo Boscarol, the director of the Slovenian ultralight plane maker Pipistrel, imagines he can move his company because of this plan.
Capital gains are included in income tax calculations in most OECD countries, while in Italy, Denmark, France, the US, Sweden, Germany, and Finland the tax that applies is much higher and rigorous than the Slovenian income tax.
"We, who are paying an average tax of 34% on our total income, are the ones who have secured EUR 4m in grants alone for Boscarol ... And we see nothing wrong with this, because we know that this is good for society," Repovž says in ‘About Boscarol’.
"We can live with the fact that some, for instance Boscarol, fail to understand this", since there are also those "who understand that all children having equal access to medical care, to knowledge, maybe even to social support and at one point business incentives, is worth more than a few more euros on the bank account".
Demokracija says the left bowing to Keynes
The STA also reports in that its latest editorial the right-wing weekly Demokracija argues that the new government coalition is blindly embracing demand-side economic theory, with "some calculations suggesting public expenditure would increase by around EUR 1bn" if the plans in the coalition agreement materialise.
They of course plan to secure funding for this by raising taxes, and the proponents of a greedy state were also not touched by the reactions of certain top entrepreneurs who threaten to move the seats of their successful companies abroad, editor-in-chief Jože Biščak says.
Leftist politicians find such proposals completely acceptable, since they can present an increase in public expenditure and redistribution as their "good deeds". It is hard to grasp how voters do not realise that it is their money that will be manipulated with.
Biščak says that even John Maynard Keynes realised before his death in 1946 that the solution lies in the invisible hand of the market that he tried to suppress.
Unfortunately, Keynes's remorse has received much less attention than his theory that the state needs to remedy the "errors" of the market. His ideas, spiced up with revived Marxism, are acceptable today for the Slovenian left, Biščak says in ‘The Ugly, the Dirty and the Evil’.
