There is a Spain – and a Catalonia – that wants to pay less taxes and another that hopes to collect more subsidies. You already guess which parties each one votes for; But what brings more votes to these politicians when they rule: increasing subsidies or reducing the percentage of what we pay?
Until now it seemed that taking care of subsidy Spain was more electorally profitable than providing fiscal relief to salary Spain, which now calculates: “Every year I work for free until June so that the Treasury keeps it.” But demography is the destiny of people and it is changing that of Spain.
In each electoral call, the Spain of the salary is increasingly more numerous than that of the subsidy and less abstentionist at the polls. For this reason, the PSOE and the left are losing community after community.
Thanks to the demographic slowdown – it's demographics, smartass! – the unemployment rate has fallen to less than half in the last ten years; And, although salaries remain low, humans have evolved to regret more what we believe is being taken from us today than what we would stop earning if we were fired. The same thing happens when it is published that in the neighboring autonomous community less personal income tax is paid or no inheritance tax at all. And that is one of the secrets of Ayuso's victories in a Madrid where the majority of those who always go to vote have an apartment or hope to inherit it.
We end up feeling with our hearts what our pockets are telling us until they take us to the polls. And it tells us more to pay less when we get paid today, than to stop receiving if we were fired tomorrow.
And, velis nolis, the material conditions of our existence end up determining the ideological ones. And the rest: charisma of eminent leaders, love of the country or hatred of foreigners or History – nothing more traitor than our own memory – are readjusted to reinforce the story that suits us.
Now he is counting percentages of personal income tax and their correlation with the votes.
