Right now there are massive popular protests going on in the country of Colombia against high tax increases 16 protestors and one policeman have been killed in the demonstrations since last Wednesday in Bogota. The cause of the protests is a proposed a tax plan aimed at raising $6.7 billion to pay the country's debts and maintain a basic income scheme for 3 million low-income people that started during the pandemic. President Iván Duque withdrew the tax plan amid the protests and his finance minister resigned the following day, but large demonstrations and roadblocks have continued. 'My heart is bleeding': J Balvín, Maluma, Viola Davis, more stars react to Colombia protests (msn.com) What's interesting about this is that it is a very popular protest, with masses of ordinary people across the country opposing it. It doesn't seem to be so politically partisan. The size of Colombia's economy (GDP) is $323.6 billion, and their total military budget is $10.8 billion, just to give some comparison. I don't think this story is only just about Colombia, it says some things about other places, and what might happen in the future. Like they say, by learning about other societies we can sometimes learn more about ourselves.
I think it's a terrible thing to be getting into massive amounts of debt. When it comes time to start paying it back, the people are going to riot. Another example of this was the protests and riots during the Greek Debt Crisis against "austerity".
So there are three issues here: 1. Basic income for the poor. 2. Paying down their debt. 3. Raising taxes. Care to guess which one lead Colombia's people to rise up in deadly protests? I'm kind of worried that it was the tax increase alone that did it. I'm not sure it is, but I always thought it would be nice to raise taxes to pay down the debt here. But that may no longer be an option.
Well the shorthand answer is the tax thing started off a snowball of unrelated unrest. How the tax proposal ties in is that the tax would drive up the price of food when they already have near 17% unemployment and a contracting economy. They are also protesting unemployment, the environment, police brutality, and some other issues like unchecked corruption. A lot of littler waves are creating a political tidal wave.
Yes, you have correctly summarized the issue. I kind of lean towards the belief that they mainly are not happy about paying taxes to pay down the debt, especially since the current party that has been dominating in politics for the last 3 years is not Left-leaning. Colombia is not a wealthy country and probably most of these tax increases would be paid by regular middle class people. So the Left is not happy about taxes going up under a government that is not of their same political persuasion, and of course those more on the Right would not be very happy about taxes going up at all, especially when a chunk of it is going to extend the basic income scheme. So it seems the President is caught in the middle, between a rock and a hard place. He can't satisfy both sides. The masses on the Left are too emotional and can't really be reasoned with, because the President isn't one of them. And the public generally does not really like the idea of raising taxes to pay down debt, even though it is the responsible thing to do. The President's proposal would have raised taxes on household products (like milk, eggs, meat) and on gasoline and utilities. Those who earn more than 2.4 million Colombian pesos (about $624) a month would have had to declare income taxes. So the tax proposal was seen as being targeted towards both the poor and middle class. The proposed tax increases were in response to the budget deficit caused by the pandemic.
