Your Excellence Mr. Mariano Rajoy and your Excellences Mr./Mrs. deputies
I am writing this letter to explain the reality of the budget cuts performed by your government, the reality of the people you represent and the reality of my generation, the generation that has finished their higher education but cannot work.
First of all I should introduce myself, I am a 24-year-old biologist who also has a MSc in Pharmaceutical and Biotechnological Industry, furthermore I am a first-year PhD student in Biomedicine. I count myself lucky because I am working on what I studied and also because I work, because I am studying for a PhD because it is what I want to do and not only to fill in my CV, I am lucky because I did not have to leave the country to work on what I wanted to, although I have to admit that I am leaving that door open. I am not so different to most of the people in my generation, I have higher education, I speak four languages, three of them at the C2 European level, and I want to work. But I have been luckier, maybe. Lots of people from my generation cannot work because they do not have the experience and they cannot obtain the experience unless they work. And then your budget cuts and increased taxes appear.
Since you are in the government you have cut the budgets of both Health and Education. Some people would argue that those are the basic pillars of society, but its not a priority for you. Our Education has never been one of the best in Europe, the English level is worse than bad, not to say void, in most of the cases, and other languages are inexistant. What used to be excellent was our Health system, used to be because the cuts on its budgets, both by the autonomies and the state, are making it become a mere shadow of what it used to be, low-paid professionals, closed operating rooms, patients receiving insufficient care or not being able to pay for their medicines.
Furthermore, you have cut the Science budget, we do not even have a Ministry anymore! That scientific community, of which you are so proud when a discovery is made, is in critical condition. Research centers have been closed, scientists leave the country when their grants expire. But it is clear that a country that invests in Research is not of your interest. However, there will not be a new generation of scientists because they will not be able to pay for university, and after them the poor children that will be educated in a low standard school will not even have the level to study in a university.
Another of your impopular budget cuts has been in social politics, incentives to rent/buy a house, economical help for those with dependent familiars, and many other incentives and grants that do not affect you because they are only for those with low income. Fortunately I do not have any dependent familiar, so I do not know how it is going, what I do know is the inability of leaving the familiar house because you cannot pay a rent, and I am not even talking about buying a flat "above our possibilities", I am talking about looking for a flat to share, because it is impossible to live alone. It is said that we live with our parents until we are 30 because of cultural background, right now is sheer necessity, a minority of the working young people earn more than a thousand euros per month, and the light and water prices keep increasing, when the incomes do not, they actually get reduced.
Now that we are talking about earnings and rises, I think your politics to increase the consumption is interesting, I am actually fascinated with the increase of the VAT to the 21%, if I am not mistaken, people tends to buy less when what they want to buy is more expensive, therefore if the VAT increases people is going to buy less. Unless, that is it, that companies decide to pay the increase of the VAT themselves decreasing their benefits and this will be terrible for the few small companies and self-employed still left.
Following all this you decided to reduce the unemployment compensation from the sixth month, I understand that you consider that there some people who is taking profit of the compensation. I am afraid you are wrong, there are unemployed that are older than 50 and cannot get a job because of being so close of retirement age, there is people without higher education that cannot go back to the job market, there is people that has studied too much and cannot get a job because the companies are afraid that they will find a better job, and above it all, there is no job market, because you are not helping to create new jobs, you are helping to destroy the job market.
And the icing on the cake: the only things that you do not even dare touch are those for which the citizens care less: the Church, the Monarchy and the Bank. Maybe you want to help the Church because they are having a faith crisis, and maybe you consider that the royal family has already enough problems, and the poor banks, that defrauded so many people, cannot sustain themselves, I do not know, but to me this is outrageous. As an atheist I cannot identify with a government that gives grants to a religion, at any level, the Church has wealth and they have to pay taxes for it, and if they cannot make ends meet they should sell their patrimony as millions of citizens do. As a republican I find it outrageous having to pay for the whole royal family, taking into account that only a pair of them are actually "working" on behalf of the country, I do not understand the benefits they have, derived from a non-existant god, anyway the fact that they are not suffering budget cuts its unbelievable. And the banks, what can I say about the banks, you are giving them financial aid because you say that if they fall the whole country is going to fall, but those banks that were supposed to help the citizens were defrauding them with lendings they could not pay, with exaggerated mortgages, with saving plans that are never going to expire and with preferent participations, the banks did not move to help their costumers when these could not pay, but we have to make sacrifices for the banks.
Maybe I have been ignorant and naïve, but that is how a normal citizen sees it. A citizen who sees that she has higher education level than most of the politicians and she has less earnings, who sees how the budgets for the most essential things are being cut but the richest people always find a way to pay less taxes, a citizen who sees that the democratically chosen politicians know nothing about their people and they do not arise from between the people, that the politicians live in another galaxy allowing them to cheer and insult when they have just announced more budget cuts with deep consequences for the people. To sum it up, I feel like this Government and this Parliament are not representing myself and they do not care about the future of the country. Maybe one day we will have a government that has learnt to listen to the ones that are actually important.
I want to say goodbye to you, if you ever get to read this letter, hoping that someday you will learn how to do it better,
Yours sincerely,
A citizen.
P.S.: In order for this letter to be spread more easily I am going to translate it to English, even if I know that most of you will not be able to read it.
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