Tax cuts: the social obscenity

In one single stroke, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has thrown away any pretence of social responsibility and fiscal prudence by proposing unsustainable tax cuts for the wealthiest segment of the population.  Even the Lib-Con coalition in the UK has refrained from making such an indecent proposal in these difficult times, limiting itself to decrease the tax burden on lower income earners.

Surely Gonzi's major merit in the past four year was weathering the international economic crisis by reneging on his pre-2008 electoral promise to cut taxes for the wealthiest segment and investing money in protecting jobs.

Now he is seeking another mandate on the same anti-social platform fully knowing that at current rates of economic growth, his tax revenue projections are pure bollocks. And if enacted, the tax cuts will leave the country bankrupt.

Ultimately Gonzi comes out of all this as just another populist politician who cares for his own without any concern for the most vulnerable in society.

All his pandering to the high moral ground in the past years has been exposed as a hoax.

This is enough reason for any decent social democratic or Christian-democratic member of parliament to vote against the budget.

But instead of committing his party to withdraw the anti-social tax cuts, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat has committed himself to retain the framework of this unsustainable and regressive budget. His only redeeming act was to commit his party to remove income tax on minimum wage earners. Surely the imposition of income tax on minimum wage earners simply added salt to the wound, but removing the salt without curing the wound is simply not enough.

In the absence of a clear commitment to withdraw the indecent tax cuts, Muscat's talk on the altruism of Maltese society and Gonzi's appeal against egoism is meaningless. Once again Muscat has reduced politics to a strategy game where only the votes of the upper-middle class count.

One can simply interpret Muscat's commitment to retain the tax cuts as a way out of his quandary on how to deal with its other commitment to reduce electricity tariffs. It is clear that in the short term, the two measures - that of decreasing the bills and decreasing taxes - are mutually exclusive.  By retaining this budget he will be buying time to postpone the utility bills promise.

Tonight Franco Debono has a very valid reason to vote against the budget which is far more important than Austin Gatt. The reason why the budget should not be approved, before or after the election is because it is anti social, regressive and unsustainable.

As Lino Spiteri wrote yesterday: "I have never seen the likes of this social obscenity from either party."