Mladina Editorial Attacks "Stupid Permanent Truths"

By , 22 Jun 2018, 10:00 AM Politics
This week's cover: New Direction: What do you want from the new government? This week's cover: New Direction: What do you want from the new government? From Mladina's Facebook

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STA, 22 June 2018 - The left-leaning weekly Mladina says in its latest commentary it is sick of hearing from all governments certain "lies and stupidities" which actually have a great impact on the fate of the country, saying that some things are simply not true, while politicians believe in them, and the media are constantly reproducing them. 

"Let's start with taxes. We have also heard in this campaign that taxes are high. This is not true. Slovenia is average in terms of total taxation. Therefore, taxes in our country are low," editor-in-chief Grega Repovž says in the commentary headlined Personal Letter.

Wages are not taxed above the average either, as representatives of companies lie to us. According to the OECD, an average income of a family in Slovenia is taxed at a 34.34% rate, which compares to 39.63% in Austria and 42.36% in Germany.

Slovenia is terrible for young people. The availability of apartments is the biggest obstacle in addition to jobs. Slovenia is a top 3 country in Europe in terms of the share of young people who live with their parents.

It is also a record-holder in the EU in terms of precarious work, which benefits the representatives of capital. Slovenia is also a record-holder in the EU in the share of young people who have fixed-term contracts (74%).

On average, people involved in precarious forms of work pay 40% less for their pensions than people with regular, full-time jobs, which means that they cannot count on decent pensions at all. "This is a horrible ticking social bomb".

Slovenia does not have an oversized public sector. The number of employees in the state administration has dropped by 11% in the last ten years, from 34,000 to around 30,000. The situation is similar with the wider public sector, which is one of the smallest in the EU.

In the last few weeks, we have been hearing how the number of people who crossed the border illegally in the last five months increased by 327.5% compared to the same period last year. The Interior Ministry is raising the alarm, and the rightist parties and the media are following suit.

But the data are misleading. In the last 25 years, the police recorded fewer illegal crossings of the border only in five other years. If a total of 5,000 people crosses the border illegally this year, as projected by the ministry, it would still be below the average for the last 20 years.

It is thus not true that illegal migrations are on the rise this year, as the numbers are below the long-term average.

The damage that Slovenians suffer because of the politics based on these stupid "permanent truths" cannot be evaluated at all, concludes the commentary.

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