Six Years of 'Progressive' Government: Six Years of Economic Decline for the Majority

The IMF said yesterday that Spain would stay out of the general slowdown of the global economy. Not only that: Spain would once again be the engine of Europe, multiplying the average growth of the Union. Thus, the macroeconomic trend of this Government is confirmed: extraordinary data that allow no rebuttal. However, they allow no rebuttal at the macro level.

If we go down to the micro level, we find the harsh reality, which we have already discussed in E-Notícies. Measured in terms of GDP per capita, the real wealth of people remains indifferent to macroeconomic growth. This is because the current increase in GDP is driven by job creation through immigration.

If we consider the factors that truly increase the quality of life, the results are very poor. These two factors are none other than productivity and education, two sides of the same coin. In the long run, an economic model based on low-productivity services, like ours, only serves to fill the files of the Ministry of Economy.

"Spain's per capita income is as far from that of the eurozone as it was in 1975, the country has not been able to reduce that gap in 48 years," said recently for El Mundothe prestigious economist Jesús Fernández Villaverde, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Likewise, Fernández Villaverde did not hesitate to describe education as "the great pending subject of the Spanish economy."

A 'Progressive' Failure

That this problem is structural is shown by the fact that, since 2019, when the 'Frankenstein' Government was born, the situation has only worsened. In fact, we find ourselves in the curious situation of a progressive Government that takes refuge in macro accounting. Gone are the left's demands to improve the "real" life of "the people."

Given the reality of the economic model, no Government has enough room to maneuver to make deep reforms. Among other things, because the necessary reforms pose two problems to current politics. The first is that they are tough reforms, and the second is that they are slow reforms. Regarding education, for example, Fernández Villaverde pointed out that, at a minimum, one must wait twenty years to see results.

In fact, the self-proclaimed "progressive" Government has deepened the economic model, and it has done so through two elements: immigration and debt. Regarding immigration, the Government has already assumed that Spain needs about 250,000 immigrants annually to keep public accounts. And regarding debt, it is public and notorious that Sánchez has indebted (even more) the country.

This creates a perfect breeding ground for impoverishing young people and the native working classes. The great symptom of this degradation is housing, the meeting point of inflation and lack of savings. This explains why inequality in Spain - a classic demand of the left - is growing more and more each day, and that it does so in an intergenerational manner.