During these last few days, the coming plan to enforce new taxes and raising the existing ones is discussed and presented through the news reports, despite the fact that everyone admits, privately and through the mass media, that there is a great economic crisis among the Greek Citizens, causing them to become impoverished not because of their own bad management or abstinence from work, but because of the continuous tax raises that surpass the financial limits of the average Greek.
The minister of financial affairs Alogoskoufis dared present officially, according to the news, the reasoning behind the raising of taxes which are already unconstitutionally high. In particular, he mentioned as his excuse the international crisis, the ‘black hole’ of the state budget and the incapacity of the ministry of financial affairs to deal with these problems, whereupon he transfers this responsibility to the People, calling the People to, in essence, pay for the errors in managements and programming that he himself has repeatedly made with the continuous support and coverage of the prime minister Karamanlis.
Beyond the fact that this admission alone is enough to persecute the financial affairs minister for breaching of duty and ineptness/ inability, simple arithmetic indicates either the enormity of deception or the enormity of irresponsibility and incapacity of the people supporting and having appointed this man to the position of financial affairs minister, since we are going to prove that minister Alogoskoufis is either a depredator of the budget of Hellas or incapable to manage properly any capital, even if it is ‘Monopoly’ money.
In particular, it is mentioned that the ‘black hole’ touches the amount of 3 billion euro which must be immediately covered and for this reason the minister Alogoskoufis and his cabinet are conferring day and night. The conclusion to which they have come, with minister Alogoskoufis leading, is that to cover the ‘black hole’, “although basically impossible” “because there are no magic ways to deal with the economic crisis”, they will enforce additional head taxes as well as particularly insulting settlements, bought-waivers, fines by the IRS which is ordered to assume that and force the People unfoundedly, abusively, unconstitutionally and illegally to act as and admit that the People is lying, irresponsible, anti-social and thieving.
In essence all that the minister Alogoskoufis and his cabinet claim and imply, including all those who are supporting him, is false, including his stated intent to cover this ‘black hole’ which he is referring to. To prove our statement, we are presenting the following evidence:
1. The leader of the political party PASOK George Papandreou stated, according to SKAI news on 21/08/2008, that 1/3 of his party’s state contribution that is received from the state budget, i.e. 1.2 million euro, will be offered by PASOK to those harmed by the fires in Ileia, through the president of the PASOK political party.
This means that the PASOK party alone receives from the state budget (that is, from the cashtill of the state = the money of Greek Citizens) [€ 1.2 * 3 = € 3.6 million] aside the rest of the funding it receives by the state for several activities from printing leaflets to organizing seminars, promoting the party, organizing events and all other kinds of expenses that the party arbitrarily deems necessary it needs and for which it is never taxed. All these expenses are paid for from the pockets of the citizens before the amounts are even gathered from the People (and therefore before it can be estimated whether there is a capacity to pay these exorbitant funds instead of pushing the budget to be unable to cover financial demands) every year regardless of any elections. During elections special additional funds are paid which are also taken from the state budget and are also signed for by the financial affairs minister, after each party arbitrarily estimates what is needed to run its election campaign. All the parties without exception are paid by the Greek People whether they want these parties or not. Calculating that in Greece there are over 15 parties that had full or partial funding by the state we are talking about at least €20-30 million which is paid by the people through the financial affairs minister so that each party can play.
2. Each parliament member and europarliament member, regardless of party, costs to the Greek State on the average €165,000 for his/her fee and additional full financial coverage of his/her entourage which he/she arbitrarily states he/she needs. This does not include the extra financial coverage of all the daily needs (living expenses as they are arbitrarily set by each parliament member), socializing for personal promotion of him/herself and his/her family without any profit for the state, extra fee for participation in all kinds of committees where the member is paid per session (with amounts of at least four digits, far higher than the monthly fee for more then 8 hours per day that the average public servant is begging to receive).
That is to say that every parliament member costs to the Greek People around €250-300,000 per year if he/she doesn’t participate in more than enough committees and such activities: so if we calculate €250,000 * 300 (the number of parliament members) = €75,000,000 is the cost of the Parliament, which is exorbitant since there is no reason for the members to be remunerated more than the average public servant, i.e. €16800 per year (the yearly cost of one of the most expensively paid public servants, given the matching years in service) * 300= €5,040,000. There is no reason for this amount not to be taxed, since all public servants also pay taxes.
3. Retiring parliament members and other such officials retain their salary in the form of pension and the state continues to cover any expenses they arbitrarily declare are personal and needed. This means that the Greek People is burdened without gaining anything to sustain people who can work and who have received a pension after only 4 -8 years of work, fact which is insulting to all the working people who receive a reduced pension after 25 – 35 years of work, work which without the privileges and the protections that the parliament members and officials enjoyed while in service and while they paid taxes, which is something that the retiring parliament members and officials never did from their salaries they received for their services. Also, the retiring parliament members/ officials, with the minister of financial affairs signing for it, are the only Citizens who legally have more than two pensions per person. Specific amounts for these pensions and funds are very hard to unearth for the average Citizen but if we calculate an average (possibly much lower than the actual amount) of €4000 per months and €2000 expenses, the more than the retired 300 parliament members/ officials cost to the Greek People without offering a thing: €84000 per year per person * 500 (at least living retirees) = €42,000,000 just for pensions and expenses of retiring parliament members without calculating in the amount special expenses and fungs that the retired parliament members are ‘entitled’ arbitrarily to demand (e.g. bodyguards/policemen, chauffeurs, secretaries, cars, etc).
4. The state, with the signing of the minister of financial affairs, has taken it up to fund the buy/donation of space, facilities, equipment and activities/ research/ scholarships, etc of the assorted foundations that are arbitrarily founded by the assorted retiring officials/ parliament members with view to commemorate their name and the financial guarantee, promotion and social power of their family members. Examples of such foundations are: Foundation of K. Karamanlis, Foundation of A. Papandreou, Foundation of K. Mitsotakis, Foundation of Rallis, etc.
Funding such foundations comes up to at least a hundred million euro to cover facilities, buildings, maintenance, personnel fees, research running, conferences, affording of scholarships, development of programs, maintenance of old photo and film material, and others. Nothing from the activity of these foundations is returned to the People and all of what they do is possible to be covered, if there is need for them, by the ministry of Culture, the several museums, libraries, the different research programmes of the universities which are also funded by the state. Arrest of the funding of these foundations as well as the allowance of the property which has been given to them by the state would earn the state at least €300,000,000 yearly plus income from the exploitation of this property.
That is to say, from a simple meritocratic redesign, matching rank and contribution of the elected state employees, who according to the Constitution are elected to serve the People and not rule over the People, we ensure their righteous reimbursement as punlic servants and their maintenance as such according to the rest of the public servant remuneration (fact which will give motivation to protect and improve the conditions of public servants in whole), the full Freedom, Independence and Self-determination of each parliament members without the limitations and the orders of political parties which are unconstitutional and undermining to the Democracy and the State as well as the full resolution of the financial problem of Greece without the necessity for any institutional change whatsoever.
In the same time state income is augmented, state expenses are reduced, need for extra taxation is extinct, capacity to reduce the taxation per capita begins to be present, capacity to raise the salaries and pensions is acquired and the total debt of Greece is not increased. Just from this sector for which the minister of financial affairs Alogoskoufis is responsible, the state can without any damage to services/ goods received and enjoyed save €435,000,000 at least per year without calculating assorted indirect and non-filed expenses paid to the above receipients.
Therefore, just from this sector the minister of financial affairs Alogoskoufis should have saved the state €1,5 billion since 2004 (when he took up office).
Coming soon, in the following articles we will calculate what could have been saved from the rest of the state financial sectors one by one WITHOUT RAISING TAXES AND WITHOUT REDUCING PENSIONS, SALARIES OR BENEFITS EVEN A SINGLE EURO SINCE 2004.
IF AT THE END OF THIS STUDY IT IS PROVEN THAT THE SO-CALLED BLACK HOLD SHOULD HAVE BEEN COVERED MORE THAN ENOUGH, THAT THERE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ANY INTERNATIONAL DEBT OF GREECE AND THERE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ANY REDUCTION IN THE QUALITY OF LIVE LEVEL OR THE PROPERTY/ FORTUNE OF THE AVERAGE GREEK CITIZEN, THEN THE MINISTER OF FINANCIAL AFFAIRS ALOGOSKOUFIS AND THE PRIME MINISTER WHO APPOINTED HIM AS SUCH ARE GUILTY OF MISMANAGEMENT AND UNDERMINING OF THE GREEK STATE AND THIS STUDY WILL BE SENT TO SERVE AS BEGINNING FOR THE DRAWING UP OF A CASE FOR PERSECUTION TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND THE INTERNATIONAL COURTS.
*The values/ prices mentioned in the article are according to formal publications in the daily press as well as according to the average prices/ values of cost and maintenance of property and salaries since access to the actual prices of the dispensations, although obligatory by law to be directly and easily accessible to the Citizens, are not posted or available through means easily-accessible to the average Greek Citizen.