The worker who votes for the boss sweeping the floor
90% of purchasing power lost over 30 years, and workers still vote for those who cut their wages. A look at economic voting and the bank bailout.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The mystery of the voter who sweeps the boss's floor
First the figure: 90% of purchasing power lost over three decades. Then the paradox: the same worker who sweeps the floor goes to the polls and votes for the owner of the broom. It is not a quip, it is a snapshot of economic voting in Spain, and no sociology manual fully explains it.
The paradox of voting against yourself
One school of analysis holds that the salaried voter chooses the candidate who cuts their income, as if servility were inherited. A more down-to-earth reading reminds us that electoral behaviour is not guided by the wallet alone: there is identity, there is antiestéticar, there is a narrative machine that turns the boss into an "underdog" and the left into the real problem. The most uncomfortable part of the debate is the point that many of those who suffer most do not even vote. Apathy, resignation and abstention complete the picture.
The bailout that never gets fully told
The numbers are on the table. 67 billion euros, the figure circulating as the cost of the bailout, which some attribute to the rescue of private banks and others, more precisely, to the hole left by Spain's savings banks (cajas de ahorro). FROB, SAREB, Bankia, Caixabank, CAM, Banco de Valencia: the list of acronyms does not settle the debate. The full operation, according to the boldest calculation, would have transferred assets worth 1.3 trillion euros to the four big banks, close to 60% of Spanish GDP. The item-by-item breakdown remains an exercise in financial archaeology worth reviewing.
Taxes, amnesties and the modelo 720
Alongside the bailout, the economic debate intersects with tax policy. One reading attributes to Mariano Rajoy's government the largest tax hike in Spanish history, plus a tax amnesty for large fortunes. The opposing reading counters with the modelo 720: the obligation to declare assets held abroad, introduced as a tool to fight tax fraud. Both things can be true at once: raising taxes on the working class while regularising the elite that hid money.
The question remains open. If purchasing power has evaporated by 90% and the financial hole was paid for by taxpayers, how many more sweeps will it take for the broom to change hands?
First the figure: 90% of purchasing power lost over three decades. Then the paradox: the same worker who sweeps the floor goes to the polls and votes for the owner of the broom. It is not a quip, it is a snapshot of economic voting in Spain, and no sociology manual fully explains it.
The paradox of voting against yourself
One school of analysis holds that the salaried voter chooses the candidate who cuts their income, as if servility were inherited. A more down-to-earth reading reminds us that electoral behaviour is not guided by the wallet alone: there is identity, there is antiestéticar, there is a narrative machine that turns the boss into an "underdog" and the left into the real problem. The most uncomfortable part of the debate is the point that many of those who suffer most do not even vote. Apathy, resignation and abstention complete the picture.
The bailout that never gets fully told
The numbers are on the table. 67 billion euros, the figure circulating as the cost of the bailout, which some attribute to the rescue of private banks and others, more precisely, to the hole left by Spain's savings banks (cajas de ahorro). FROB, SAREB, Bankia, Caixabank, CAM, Banco de Valencia: the list of acronyms does not settle the debate. The full operation, according to the boldest calculation, would have transferred assets worth 1.3 trillion euros to the four big banks, close to 60% of Spanish GDP. The item-by-item breakdown remains an exercise in financial archaeology worth reviewing.
Taxes, amnesties and the modelo 720
Alongside the bailout, the economic debate intersects with tax policy. One reading attributes to Mariano Rajoy's government the largest tax hike in Spanish history, plus a tax amnesty for large fortunes. The opposing reading counters with the modelo 720: the obligation to declare assets held abroad, introduced as a tool to fight tax fraud. Both things can be true at once: raising taxes on the working class while regularising the elite that hid money.
The question remains open. If purchasing power has evaporated by 90% and the financial hole was paid for by taxpayers, how many more sweeps will it take for the broom to change hands?
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (58 replies).
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