The most popular party in the poll was Podemos, a stridently left-wing political movement founded just at the beginning of this year….
The fledgling party also has the luxury of being able to espouse policies and strategies that sharply mirror the demands of a long-ignored, long-disenfranchised electorate. Those policies include a redistribution of wealth, the right to a basic income, a cap on executive salaries, an independent audit of the country’s public debt, increased transparency of political party funding, more stringent restrictions on political lobbying, stronger government support for SMEs and R&D-intensive industries, higher penalties for tax evasion, the creation of a national bank for investment and the renationalization of strategic sectors such as telecommunications, utilities and the country’s formerly public-owned savings banks [Spanish speakers can read the party's full manifesto by clicking here].
Such promises – whether realistic or not – can be extremely seductive to a public sharply embittered by a two-party system that long threw them overboard. That’s not to say that Podemos can be expected to turn their current popularity into an electoral victory – in Spain, as in most managed democracies, the electoral system is rigged in the favor of the incumbent parties. Nonetheless, if it continues to capture the hearts and minds of the disaffected – in a country where the disaffected are now the overwhelming majority – it could well hammer the final nail into the country’s two-party system. As such, the result in the next elections would be a very weak coalition government at best or a hung parliament at worst – and just at the very moment when Spain’s richest region, Catalonia, is itching to break free.Wolf Street
It’s Official: Spain is Unraveling
Don Quijones
3 comments:
The problem with Podemos is they don't understand monetary economics (or if they do, is tangentially), and are misguided by the typical misunderstanding of the, not operational, reactionary left.
In their agenda is not 'dump the euro', because if it was, they wouldn't get elected, most probably their politicians are still enamoured with the political project of USE (United States of Europe), and their policies will be impossible inside the current EU, even less in the EMU.
So the Spain electorate (much like all southern Europe), is still captured by the myth of the euro, as their politicians are. They are backing already from many of their proposals (for example BIS), as they know those are impossible, no matter how much you tax the rich, economically (and likely, socially).
So the pretended votes they are getting, are based, mostly on a promise of regeneration, specially regarding corruption. In that sense Spain is getting ahead of other countries, like Greece, where the stinking corruption still runs rampant and there is not much regeneration. However, the misunderstanding of monetary economics, still remains with a big part of the populace, and so does the misunderstanding of budgets, the euro, etc. When we check that removing corruption is a good start, but not enough, to get things going, we are in for a rude awakening and more danger and uncertainty ahead.
In sum: not enough, not smart enough, still misguided.
Ignacio interesting. .
Sounds like in the individual nations over there the "rations" cohort are in control of the institutions while the "wages" cohort is operating in the shadows (corruption/EU)....
Opposite over here imo "wages" people are on top while the "rations" people are underground. ... rsp,
Matt I'm not sure...
But on the same topic, some interesting fact is that when Podemos asked for a BIG the most common immediate response was but who is gonna pay for that? instead of but who is gonna work? or those who work are gonna have to pay for those who don't.
I think in that regard the distribution amongst both cohorts is more even (even rations > wages, using your language) than in other places (I would say USA is more wages > rations). Probably same story, more or less, over continental Europe (even maybe the UK), given the pace and priorities of life (seeking a better balance of living and working for a wage), and how the labour unions-state-corporations pacts have been structured over decades, now creating a divide between generations (picture Saturn Devouring His Son).
Post a Comment