During the entirety of summer there was, through the news stories and reports, a great intimidation/ terrorism of the People in relationship with the IRS and the chase it would unleash on the Citizens for the payment of debts and the enforcing of new tax debts through inquiries and other means that were going to be imposed so that the sum of the People would be forced to pay much more than the already high amount demanded. All of this, it is said through the media, was and is in an effort to cover the ‘black hole’ of the state budget.
Now, after the proposed plans (such as imposition of a head tax) were withdrawn thanks to the great reaction of the people, an effort to placate the People but also urge them to come forward with payments through the so-called ‘lenient/ pro-people/ compromising’ policy of the settlement of debts with a minimum installment of €300 per month and a virtual reduction of the amount due.
Keeping in mind that the average salary or self-employed person’s income, of people not enjoying state funding and other tactics of promotion by the state like the business people of the council of industrialists who suggested this policy, is from €1000 to €1500 on the average, and that the sum of the water, electricity and phone bills come up to around € 300- 400, the monthly food needs come to around € 200- 400 for a family without young children (with young children it comes to €500 – 600), necessary expenses such as education, accountant services, health, insurance, fuel/ commuting come up to around €600 per month, the expenses without a need for rent / loan payments and clothing, social life and personal entertainment (which are part of the Human Rights of every Citizen and not a luxury) come up to €1600 – 2000 on the average, without the ‘lenient/ pro-people/ compromising’ saddling of yet one more installment.
Having already analyzed to whom the phenomenon of ‘black hole’ is attributed and having shown that the Citizen has already given more than enough funds which are being systematically stolen, the effort of placating the People in this manner is at least an insult of the Greek People’s intelligence and reveals, of course, the reason for the IRS terrorism of the past months: from the stress of having to immediately pay exorbitant amounts they are hoping for the full acceptance of these additional installments because the Citizens will be ‘relieved’.
The aim of wanting to cover the ‘black hole’ that the minister of Finances Alogoskoufis claims is a false claim. If he truly aimed to this, he wouldn’t spend the People’s money to fundings of several different hundreds of institutions which do nothing but gather information someone can find in an encyclopedia or is the task of universities to acquire, he would not fund and tax-exempt incredibly rich corporate owners using state facilities, he wouldn’t accept an incredibly high salary for himself and his associates, he wouldn’t make his wife’s profession have a proprietary character, he wouldn’t have allowed the exorbitant investment covering 10 and 20 times the true cost of cultural and athletic events of doubtful transparency and value for the sum of the People and he would, all in all, try to lower the cost of all without exeption the construction tasks of the state using the habitually idle huge energy reserve of the State, the army and the jobless Citizens, instead of paying again exorbitant amounts for the construction of buildings, ports and other necessary facilities which he then gives over to private enterprises as if the minister were their employee and not of the People.