Mladina: IMAD has turned into neo-liberal ideology office
STA, 19 October 2018 - While the IMAD government macroeconomic forecaster once featured progressive economic thinkers, today it is nothing but a neo-liberal think-tank, the weekly Mladina says in its latest commentary, adding that this comes to the detriment of the numerous talented individuals employed there.
IMAD has turned from an institution where the best young economists wanted to get a job into just another government office of slightly suspicious reputation thanks to the "wonder boys of neo-liberal political beliefs", editor-in-chief Grega Repovž says.
The reality has torn their theses apart, but the media still like them because they offer populist theories about the expensive and inefficient state, too high wages, with the irony being that a majority of them have spent their entire careers in the public sector.
After two full terms as the director of IMAD, Boštjan Vasle is now an acting director and continues to play his crafty game with every government which is not ideologically close to him.
The governments of Alenka Bratušek and Miro Cerar had to listen to Vasle diplomatically, as if he was the IMF, scolding them every time they showed the intention to lead a leftist policy. His words were, of course, wrapped up in an allegedly expert discourse.
The new government of Marjan Šarec, which only hinted that it might start leading a somewhat more socially-oriented politics than its predecessors, also immediately heard from Vasle, after hearing from the Fiscal Council.
IMAD has produced an analysis which shows that wages in the public sector are actually not relatively high, but instead of releasing it, Vasle hosted a round table debate, inviting his "neo-liberal friends" to participate.
"Their statements were supposed to balance out the data and warn in an allegedly expert discourse the prime minister and ministers that they should not even think about abandoning the neo-liberal faith, I mean, agenda."
Vasle himself turned the fundamental conclusion from the analysis that the average wage in the public sector is not higher than in the public sector into a warning to the government that it should not dare increase wages in the public sector.
Fortunately, the government has the opportunity to appoint to the helm of IMAD a person who will have different goals than the current director, the voice of neo-liberalism, concludes the commentary Just Another Ideological Office.
Demokracija: Birth rate threatened by state interference
STA, 18 October 2018 - The right-wing weekly Demokracija raises the issues of hate speech, Europe's falling birth rate, migration and "cultural Marxism" in the latest editorial, prompted by a hate-speech case against a Church official.
Under the headline Milan Kučan's Oxymoron, editor-in-chief Jože Biščak attacks Slovenia's first president for calling for action against hate speech at a WWII anniversary ceremony.
"His thesis is that freedom of speech should be fought for by curbing freedom of speech ... Quite the opposite of what Tadej Strehovec said, that is that censorship should be countered by more speech.
"Have you noted the difference between how freedom is understood by the former Communist leader and how by the young Catholic priest, the victim of a show trial," Biščak writes in reference to the trial of the secretary general of the Slovenian Bishops' Conference for allowing hate speech as a website editor.
Biščak argues that the left feels threatened because different-minded people have become engaged in the areas the "cultural Marxists" believe they should not have such as education and art. "That is in those fields where the left has been indoctrinating emerging generations."
Biščak goes on to say that the same mindset as that of the left in Slovenia has infected West Europe; "It is outright dreadful the European Commission's calculation that Europe may have a population of 3.8 billion, of which 18 million in Slovenia.
"How will they achieve that when European women are having ever fewer children? The answer is clear - cultural Marxism, which gave a rise to social democracies and, as a result, a decline in the autochthonous population, will tackle the Continent's demographic problem by settling cultures that are not only incompatible with Europe but also hostile to it."
Biščak also counters the argument of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies that women in Europe have fewer children because of the precarious labour market, arguing that history disproved the claim. He moreover rejects the thesis that there is a link between inequality and birth rate.
Instead, Biščak says that what in fact reduces the birth rate is government interference in the life of individuals and families.
"The moment the state promised to take care of people in their old age there was no longer any need for the traditional family, that is the type of family despised by cultural Marxism. This is why the Left understands awakening traditionality as a threat to its existence."
