Where Fiscalism becomes Terrorism

The latest national census shows massive Polish emigration. Since 2004 a million of us have left – official figures say.This is the gigantic exile, the largest loss of population after World War II.

Poland is said to be a country of a successful systemic transformation. The efficient propaganda has done enough to wash the brains not only in Poland and I should give its masters their due.

The truth is banal: our crown jewels have been sold out for peanuts and there is no significant Polish private company after twenty years. The effect of a “successful transformation” is ridiculous: Poland is a country with a large unemployment rate, impotent middle class and little self-made big business.

Public debt has brought on unprecedented fiscal oppression, the only solution mastered perfectly by the so-called political class. The costs of living are soaring, but the government is turning a blind eye to it. The show-offy performance for the sake of the eurocracy is more important.

Meanwhile, there is a native yearning among the young generation who look forward to developing personally by setting up a small business and building it up from scratch. In vain. Obstacles are severe: strangled domestic demand and lack of initial capital, not to mention the tax wedge (ineffective compulsory insurance including) and administrative oppression from numerous institutions. All of this makes any entrepreneurial activity rather risky, not only for a fledgling businessman. Realities confirm the 62th position in the latest “Doing Business” ranking.

In effect, around 30 per cent (according to an Austrian economist prof. Fredriech Schneider 27,4 per cent*) of GDP is being created in the informal economy. Poland holds the primary position in this field in Europe. In consequence, the national budget is always short of funds necessary to cover basic public services and to develop the poor infrastructure, neglected over decades..

Poland’s advancement falls short and a dangerous gap in the social structure has gone up in recent years. Low net wages for employees force them to emigrate. The youth has no choice but to seek out a living elsewhere. Those who stay at home, have to come up against the problem of an ageing society. The pension system is in the red. The inefficient health care is not bigger disgrace than thousands of hungry children at schools.

Social consensus is not functioning any more. The redistribution system has rotten and feeds only the red tape. The chances are that the circulation of money is under control of a bureaucratic group of interest. Dozens of unnecessary, useless institutions are wasting the modest national income, worked out in toil. The state is developing against the nation.

Bertrand de Jouvenel predicted such a situation sixty years ago, delivering lectures at the University of Cambridge**. The new power-grabbing class of clerks became untouchable for the fiscal system, to the detriment of those who had been destroyed as economically independent. To update his prediction, we may add: also to the detriment of those for whose sake it is being done at present, against the needy: in Poland a blind person has to show a guide dog’s certificate at a revenue office.

The system oppresses “have-nots” whose incomes are easy to tax, but if you “have” bad luck, like a self-made man Roman Kluska, once an IT tycoon and the owner of the Optimus company, you will be ruined by the greedy revenue system.

Democracy without economic freedom is worth nothing. It is only a vanity fair, overwhelmed by clientelism and the every-day tribute that is being paid to the omnipotent bureaucracy. I this way we are at a turning point, where the very idea of the nation state is at stake.

Marek Bednarz

bem@autograf.pl

* Rzeczpospolita 58/2003

** Bertrand de Jouvenel “Redystrybucja. Grabieżczyignorancja”; Fijor Publishing (Warsaw 2011), p. 128.