HFat wrote:So your definition of "stupid" is someone who votes for the wrong party.
And your definition of "populist left" is membership in the 2nd Internationale. Since you say there are no populist parties in Switzerland, you'll probably be interested to know that the 2nd Internationale has been in governement for more than 50 years without interruption here.
What are you? Some kind of fascist? You're certainly no democrat.
Unfortunately you are mistaking socialist parties and populist parties.
1) He promises to increase the taxes of the "rich ones" - that is if your yearly income is 33000€ before taxation, or 2750€ per month before taxation. That is insanely rich, right ? All that comes after in his 2006-2010 term he created a "millionaire tax" - that is when your monthly salary is above ~1700€ per month before taxation (~1200€ after taxation). They are insanely rich as well, right ? FYI average monthly salary in country is ~800€. The "rich people" will create companies which will exist only on paper, just to optimalize their incomes : "That car won't be his, it will be a car of his company. That computer is not his, it is the computer of his company. Look state, you can't tax him, he has only the minimal 300€ salary, he is poor. Ah yeah, he got other 40000€ from company dividends, well, yeah, you can tax them with your 25% dividend tax. A lot less than ~45-50% income tax + social system payments". So the final result of this move will be negative.
2) He promises to increase the taxation of the monopolies, huge companies and banks. All nice and good - but only a fool can think the companies will lower their profits. If you tax them 5% more, they will get their 5% more from you, their client. The "rich companies" will move their increased taxation expenses at the customers. Banks are pretty close to a cartel system, you can see that they all increase the various fees already. Monopolies have even easier job - they are monopolies after all. The only area where i can see this work are companies like Tesco, but that could just result in them leaving the market altogether, resulting in lower competition and higher prices. Again, it will result in more money coming out of pocket of public and/or decreased sales. So the final result will be negative or minimal.
3) The final result of previous 2 steps will be realization, that they can't keep their promises about no increased taxation for most of the public - because they are not only bound by their program (which majority of their voters didn't even read), but what is worse for them, they have to get under 3% GDP because Eurozone agreement requires them to.
4) He easily sacrifices the future pensions from personal pension accounts by changing the percentage which goes to state pension system (Bismarck style pyramid game), because he doesn't care about the future, he cares only about now. He doesn't care that the population is not increasing (requirement for Bismarck system, unless you increase the retirement age - which he is not willing to do), that is not his problem. It is the problem of politicians somewhere in 2030-2040, he doesn't give a damn about them. Not populist you say ?
5) Our country yearly income is only 78% of it's expenses. The current ruling party promised that they will lower expenses of the state and will lower the difference between the income and expenses. Yet what is their first things to do ? Try to exclude private companies from the health insurance system (not a problem with that), which will probably end up with ~400 million euros (3% of country yearly income) going out of country pocket to the pocket of his sponsor, who funnily enough is the current owner of the biggest private health insurance company (there is one other insurance company, but that one is very small). So he will increase various taxes, which will lower income (or money they have after paying their own expenses) of people by various means, so he can pay out his sponsor. While his promises were lowering the country expenses. If this is not populist, then what ?
And we could continue about different areas where they promise things they are simply unable to deliver, but most of the "populist" things usually revolves around economy. And considering pretty the only message they sent to people was "People need certainty" in terms of financial situation, they are a populist party. The fact that they are part of PES (European socialist party) has nothing to do with it. By the way, they only got in PES by merging with a miniature party which was part of PES.
You maybe have a different viewpoint, but my experiences with most people when it comes to politics and economics are unfortunately bad ones. For many, promising increase in salary and bashing the other party is more than enough. And yes, i will call those people stupid.
@m0002a: And what do you think (the original) direct democracy is ?
Anyway, i am out of this topic, we can't and won't solve it here.