The National Impotence

Aren"t we forgetting something?

The state budget does not rely just on taxes.

Yes, VAT and earnings taxes are two major revenue sources for the budget, but they are not the only ones.

There is something else, but I don"t feel like mentioning it, because it would make everyone laugh.

Dividends from public companies.

After I wrote the words above, I spent two minutes thinking.

I could picture readers elbowing each other - "get a load of that moron, dividends from public companies!".

A wave of shame washed over me.

I don"t even have the courage to put the words on paper.

The state owns a number of national companies and Autonomous Institutions (not to mention that it holds majority stakes or controlling interests in various companies).

Most of them are monopoly companies - from salt to electricity, from public transportation to land improvement.

Well, it is beyond belief that a monopoly that covers the entire country could be unprofitable.

I wish I didn"t have to continue - I feel like I am far too naive ...

OK.

So what?! - I"ll up the ante!

I haven"t heard about unions being willing to participate in a program for improving the profitability of government monopolies.

I have yet to hear one professional association willing to provide business-plans and management for the government"s monopolies.

I have yet to hear from the government make a commitment to improve the profitability of its monopolies.

It would be so easy for the government to set financial performance criteria for its monopolies!

All it would need to do would be to simply ask the heads of the various state owned autonomous companies (which get paid tens of thousands of Euros in wages) to present the measures they would take to meet their profit targets and to investigate their results once a month, and then they would be legally entitled to fire the managers that didn"t meet their objectives. In certain cases, it could impose a private manager which would be required to provide performance guarantees - risk free, everybody wins.

As if it were a fatality, everyone settles for the fact that there isn"t enough money.

Without any dignity whatsoever, both parties fight over crumbs - "we"re going to cut wages and pensions"; "no you won"t, freeze wages and raise the VAT from 19% to 20%..." In fact, for the moment, threatened by the far too short six-week deadline that the IMF gave us, we are forced to adopt a mix of measures which produce immediate results - we need to cut spending and raise taxes.

I don"t that in situations like this it will ever be possible to avoid inequities and even if these measures were to be passed judiciously (which is not the case here), you can never please everybody.

But no one, not even for a moment, speaks about how long the nation will need to sacrifice itself this time.

And if they say nothing about how long it"s going to take, it"s because they don"t know.

And it"s only natural they don"t know, because no one has drawn up a general business plan - it"s called "strategy" - nor business plans for each sector and specific measures for each monopoly - they"re called tactics".

Even as we cut 15% off some poor sap"s 600 RON pension, the debts of autonomous companies and national companies continue to grow, while they keep paying tens of thousands of Euros to their bosses, and their electricians three times more than their private sector counterparts, while they work five times less and doing a job ten times worse.

Nobody talks about work. They all talk about money.

• P.S.:

In fact, I am not that naive. I know why none of the political parties will do anything to whip the national companies and the autonomous enterprises into shape: those positions at the top of the various national companies and autonomous enterprises are part of the perks of the party that won the elections. Giving these jobs to the cronies of the party is part of a "loyalty" program. These gravy trains are extremely tempting: even though there are performance criteria, failing to meet them does not cause any problems. regardless of what you do as the head of such a company, the pay is great and it keeps on coming. But the perks don"t stop there, the boss can hire his whole family in the company. These are the reasons why the state owned companies aren"t profitable.

It makes sense that the opposition isn"t willing to tackle this issue any more than the governing party.

How do you pay eye-popping wages to your cronies when times are tough?

That"s easy ! Take away the people"s pensions.