Where is our poverty?
Published
in daily SME, October 17, 1999.
Slovaks are divided into three groups: creators
of wealth, destroyers of wealth, and defenceless children and old men.
In this tractate we only deal with the first two forms,
because the third one doesn’t deserve any other care except natural care
under time-honoured laws.
Creators of wealth – small and medium size entrepreneurs
and their employees.
This is a group of Slovaks we can’t write much about here. These are
people who work, create wealth, and contribute the majority of their work’s
results to the state, towns and fire raisers. These are lawless persons,
slaves, and vassals. Their right is merely to work and pass on the results
of their work. From 1 September 1999, they are people who can be sent to
prison at anytime. They are only the breadwinners for the destroyers of
wealth and the whole country.
Destroyers of wealth –
1/ The state and representatives of other forms of the public administration
and their employees. These are people paid for from the taxes of the
”taxpayers”, specifically from the taxes taken from small and medium size
entrepreneurs and their employees. They are the rules of this country.
2/ State companies and their employees. These are all prosperous
organisations that do not pay taxes and live only by the funding they receive
from the taxpayers.
3/ Big entrepreneurs in Slovakia are not in fact entrepreneurs.
Because the majority of created wealth is owned by the state, only order
can be reached by the state. And we know that order can only be achieved
by an entrepreneur loyal to the state (i.e. not the most efficient entrepreneur)
or an entrepreneur who pays the highest commission to state officers.
These state officers protect this “big” entrepreneur, and he is free from
paying most taxes, or simply doesn’t pay taxes or contributions at all.
The amount he steals for his benefit, or for the benefit of his officers,
will be paid by small and medium size entrepreneurs and his employees.
4/ Mafia groups live from blood and stolen money and their greatest
advantage is that they don’t have to pay any taxes at all.
How could this happen?
Normally citizens establish a state to meet the functions
that individuals alone cannot manage. The state is the product of the citizen
and serves him. It provides what a citizen or civil communities can’t provide.
The countries of Europe have not been established naturally. All of them
are derived from monarchies with monarchist legislation; in our country
this is completed by communist legislation. The monarch was an unlimited
ruler. Everything the nation created belonged to him, and he allocated
it at his whim. Such is the Slovak state.
Do we have democracy here?
We believe in this illusion. We have all sorts of freedom,
and the elections in our country are also held democratically - even Europe
has confirmed it. However, we have no democracy here.
Democracy, alias IDIOTISM
If an entrepreneur shows an annual profit of 20
million Slovak crowns, he has to transfer 16 million of it to the state.
If an entrepreneur employs a person to realise
himself in a human way and to provide for him and his family in order to
free the state from paying unemployment benefits and the entrepreneur offers
him a wage of 10,000 SKK, the entrepreneur has to pay an equal amount to
the state.
If a citizen of this state is in a situation where
his child falls ill and he needs a million crowns for his child’s surgery,
he can establish a civil association, a non-profit organisation with one
thousand members who pay a membership fee of 1,000 SKK. He has his 1 million
crowns. At the same moment, he must deposit 400,000 SKK to pay next year’s
tax to the state. He will be left with only 600,000 SKK. And if he pays
the wages of the doctors, he will have to pay taxes and other contributions
of at least 300,000 SKK.. From the million crowns he collected from association
members from taxed money provided for charitable purposes, the citizens
of this ”democratic” society pay at least 70% to the state.
Simply: If somebody makes money, he is penalised at an 80% rate, and
if somebody allows another person to make money, he will be penalised with
a 100% penalty, and if somebody has to care for his family’s health, he
is penalised by a penalty of more than 70%. Independence is penalised pursuant
to law.
Stealing pursuant to law
It makes no sense to enumerate such nonsense. Everybody
knows who in our poor country is able to create wealth. This wealth belongs
unconditionally with the destroyers of wealth. Only somebody who has never
created and has never been able to create wealth can dispose of created
wealth.
To label these contributions a tax burden is a cynical euphemism. Openly,
we have to say that it is robbery of the citizen, robbery by law. This
is definitely something unethical. Logically, destroyers of wealth
can’t be called robbers.
Illegal stealing
The creators of wealth are good at self-preservation and
cannot be liquidated. An entrepreneur who produces an annual profit of
20 million crowns may pay one million of these to skilful lawyers to reduce
his tax burden. An entrepreneur who wants to pay his employee ten thousand
crowns will make an agreement with him that his wage is 3,600 SKK, and
the rest he will receive as black money. In addition, the founder of the
association will find other ways to minimise obligatory ”tax contributions”.
The creators of wealth are forced to steal illegally. This is something
completely unethical.. Can a situation in which the creators of
wealth have to pay up to 80% of the wealth they created to somebody else
be called a democracy?
I seem to have been speaking about the ”tax burden”, about economic
problems. This is not the whole truth. The situation is one in which the
creators of wealth are not living in an ethical society. The legislation
of the Slovak Republic is UNETHICAL.
Herein lies our poverty
If somebody is allowed to dispose of another’s property
and is absolutely sure that he can use and destroy it, he would not feel
any liability. And our society has brought people to this.
And here the calls by intellectual people do not help reduce corruption,
nor dated impulses, nor speeches by priests in churches or private radios
where those stolen from are persuaded not to steal, and Transparency International
will remain only a myth, the same way that in naive dreams everything will
improve itself in several generations. Nothing will improve itself. Until
the state will steal from the most able people (who haven’t yet left the
country) until then we will only dream about improvement. Maybe one day
we will live like they have lived for ages in other countries.
How to get out of it
Political parties who reward their members by sinecures
in the state administration are happy with this situation. They have proved
conclusively that they will not help us. Who else? Is it so helpless? Despite
a general feeling there are at least two (possibly naive) solutions.
1/ Until now, the United States has come to Europe to stop the murdering.
With weapons in their hands, risking their lives to purge the sick of Europe
from its own murderers, protecting democratic values. And the stealing
of a nation is also contrary to democratic rules and against human rights.
Possibly the USA will once again acknowledge that it is time to come armed,
ready to rid us of our own robbers and introduce American legislation.
2/ The other non-standard solution, but nevertheless a constitutional
one, comes from article 16, part 2 of the Constitution of the Slovak
Republic: ”Nobody can be tortured, nor can they be punished in a cruel,
inhuman or humiliating way,” and article 32 of the same constitution
states: ”Citizens are entitled to stand up against anybody who would remove
the democratic order of fundamental human rights and freedoms defined in
this constitution if the activity of constitutional bodies and the efficient
use of legal means are not possible”.
According to our valid constitution, the creators of wealth are already
entitled to reduce the payment of blood money to the state and other parasitic
organisation to a necessary 10%; they have the fundamental human right
to use the profit for their own benefit and the development of their own
creativity, to increase the property that means to increase this republic
and all its members. Because nobody else but their creator and NOBODY ELSE
is entitled to dispose them. The state administration will have to change
its whole concept immediately, liquidate the parasitic forms of its existence
and come down to a lower level for the necessary and functional 10%.
Blaho Uhlár
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