The Budgets or the continuity of the turn

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Both the years of the dictatorship and those of the so-called Transition until 2019 were based on a more or less implicit economic pact (1) between the economic elites, the great fortunes, the great businessmen and, even, part of the wealthy classes, which was along the following lines: we accepted democracy at the time in exchange for maintaining low-intensity fiscal pressure. So it was. At the time of Adolfo Suárez's government it was around 25% and during the years of the Transition until the aforementioned date it reached a meager 34%, which has condemned the Spanish economy to backwardness once the dictatorship was over. And finally, in the 2021 budgets, a leap forward was made to bring us closer to countries like Italy or Germany, which are around 41%-42% of fiscal pressure (2). And these budgets consolidate spending to help bring these figures closer with a global expenditure of million euros, which represents an increase of compared to the previous year. The public has proven essential to sustain the economic system anywhere on the planet In relative terms we still do not know what the budgeted spending will be for 2022 because it is not yet known what the GDP will look like, but if we reached one trillion two hundred billion million euros which is a very optimistic figure, it would represent something more of. I



Other words, the jump in public participation in the economy will be equally notable even if we do not reach the relative public spending of Italians and Germans. And, with the failure of neoliberal capitalism, the public sector has proven essential to sustain the economic system anywhere on the planet. We live in a time of intervened capitalism, not because of social democratic Australia Phone Number desires wherever this ideology governs or can govern, but because it has been the big businessmen themselves and others not so much who have made a digital and telephone pilgrimage to the governments and power centers of the planet –FMO, Central Bank, central banks, etc. - to shout: intervention!, intervention!, intervention! In 2018 with Lehman Brother, the saying that “the problem is the State and the solution is the market” ended. It has been shown that what is not a solution is the market alone . It is true that there are still right-wing ideologues glorifying the virtues of the single market in business schools and in the economic media, but it has been precisely the business men and women, that is, the entrepreneurs, who have betrayed them.







But returning to our budgets, the next notable fact is the increase in social spending, with a direct figure of 248,391 million euros. The lion's share of this amount goes to pensions with 171,165 million and where the rest of the benefits are also: unemployment, access to housing, migration, social economy, etc. And to this figure we must add those that the Communities, city councils and other administrations dedicate to social issues, since they will receive 70,729 million from the Central Administration which, added with the tax revenue from the transferred and shared taxes, will reach 126,508 millions of euros. This figure will be the sum of the amount transferred from the general budgets plus 10,702 million from the Nest Generation EU funds and another 7,004 million from extraordinary transfers, also from the Central Administration. I don't think the Communities have any reason to complain unless they invent it. And here the part dedicated to the social will depend on the political color with which they are governed. Another notable figure is the item dedicated to the Public Debt , with 30,175 million, which will be used to pay the interest that accrues during the year plus the amount allocated to the amortization of this debt according to intentions that emerge from the budgets. It is an important figure and should be used to address possible increases in interest rates that make outstanding debt more expensive. The figure of 120% debt over GDP seems like a barrier that the Government never seems willing to cross, which is reasonable.