Teaching Pills 4 - Applied Financial Maths: the implicit grant of the ICO student loan

Many overgraduate students in Spain have applied during the last 4 years to a new kind of student loan, called ICO Renta Universidad, in order to complete their studies with a Master's Degree. This is pretty new in the Spanish system, despite being very common in other Western countries, specially in the UK and the USA. In this particular case the loan had quite favourable conditions: a 3 years grace period (up to 6 years, under certain circumstances), a 0% interest rate and 10 years to be repaid.

Some of my fellow friends, who meet the conditions to defer either one or their first three years of payments, have asked me whether it would be better to do so or not. Of course there is not a general answer for that, because each one of them would have different current situations and, more determinant, future expectations of income and, besides, there are some other uncertainties such as the internal devaluation in Spain, the labour market dynamics and the prospects of inflation. Thus I give NO advice. Nevertheless it tourned out to be a nice sample to explain how financial maths work. I'll take a made-up case study and I'll do some assumptions about unknown variables: I'll suppose Spain keeps up within the euro -nobody knows what could happen with these loans otherwise- and inflation will be low, but not negative*. I'll take inflation rate in a 2%, which is commonly accepted as the usual target for central banks and quite consistent with a depressed economy with an extremely high unemployment**. Finally, I'll take a 15.600€ loan, amount very frequently applied for, since it was the maximum amount for a one-year master's degree.

The three options they face are:

A) Regular payment. Starting in the year t to t+9 and paying 130€ monthly:

130 (€/month) *120 (months in ten years) = 15600€.

B) Defer one year. Starting in the year t+1, paying 130€ monthly every year up to t+8, and 260 €/month the last year, t+9:

130*96 + 260*12 = 15600€.

C) Defer three years. Starting in the year t+3, paying 130€ monthly the first four years and 260€ monthly the last three years:

130*48 + 260*36 = 15600€.

By all means it's the same NOMINAL amount because it is a 0% interest-rated loan. Does it mean that they are just indifferent? Absolutely not. Here is where inflation shows up: the same nominal money today is not worth the same 10 years afterwards -in terms of the goods and services you could buy with it. As most of us can intuitively deduce that means that, provided we face any positive inflation and with a 0% rate, it would be better to delay the payment as long as possible but, how much benefit would we take of that strategy? As I said, it depends on the actual inflation rate which we can't know beforehand, but supposing this 2% average inflation rate for the whole period and that it keeps constant during the period -this is a strong condition but it allows us to calculate and it's impossible to foresee any trend in advance. You should take it as an average- the figures would be:

B) 130*12/(1+0.02)^9 = 1560/1.195 = 1305.34.

It is to say, the money we don't pay in the year t and we pay in the year t+9 is worth 1305.34 in terms of real (year t based) money. 1560-1305.34 = 254.66€, or a 19.5% saving of one-year's part of the total credit for that deferred year (therefore for a 1/10 of the total amount, an extra overall saving of 1.95%).

C) 130*36/(1+0.02)^7 = 4680/1.1487 = 4074.22.

In this case the money we don't pay in the years t, t+1 and t+2 and we pay in the years t+7, t+8 and t+9 respectively, is worth 4074.22 in real money (years t, t+1 and t+2 based) instead of the nominal 4680. So far, so good. Now if we want to put them all in the same base-year (we should!) we need to financially move the gaining of the years t+1 and t+2 to the year t (that's called discounting when it's backwards and capitalizing when it's forwards) -> for t+1: (4074.22/3)/1.02 = 1331.44; for t+2: (4074.22/3)/(1.02^2)= 1305.33. And for the year t the deferred payment was worth 1358.07 (No extra calculations needed, it's already expressed on the base year). If we consider the nominal payment was 1560 every year we have: 1560*3 - (1358.07+1331.44+1305.33) = 4680- 3994.84 = 685.16€ That's the overall gain of the option C expressed in real terms, taking t as the base year. It means an extra 4.4% overall saving.

I keep saying an extra gaining. Why? Because either way or even not delaying any payment we are already benefiting from the 0% interest rate, provided any positive inflation, and we are, therefore receiving a covered transfer from the government or the bank, whoever is covering the rates -I guess it must be the government, banks are not known by their philanthropic approach to lending. We could, for instance, calculate what's been the actual gain of the grace period for the first payment year, because we know the actual inflation 2.989% (2010), 2.377% (2011) and 2.868% (2012). Supposing someone who had the loan approved on the 1st January 2009, the grace period has supposed, so far: 1560 / (1.02989)(1.02377)(1.02868) = 1560/1.0846 = 1438.31. -> 1560-1438.31=121.69€ (year t based) or 8.46% saving for the first year of payments. In conclusion, the money he or she asked to finish the studies has received a sort of 8.5% grant, so far (for the next years we'll need to multiply this discount factor by (1+i)^t+n, being i= real inflation and n= number of years). Obviously this "implicit grant" will be higher as times goes by, provided positive inflation (for the 13th year, taking a 2% average inflation rate it would be 1.02^13 = 1.2936 -> a 29.36% "implicit grant": the 1560€ you have to pay then would be worth roughly a 30% less in real money than when you got them, given this inflation rate). The higher real inflation during the period the higher implicit grant you get, and vice versa. Whether it is fair or not has nothing to do with financial maths (although I can't help saying that I'd rather go for a public and affordable -ideally free- university system and a proper grant scheme for the poor, which allows everyone to get the education they want, regardless of their current or future income and their lower or higher opportunity costs. But this is another story).

I have only exposed the differential figures between option A and option B and C, which was the relevant information to make a decision in this case. Thereby year t is the year you start to pay the loan and not the year you received it, which would be the proper "year zero" to know the total amount of the implicit grant. It is indeed interesting to calculate the global gaining of the loan -to know which percent of it is a sort of implicit transfer- and if you feel curious, given a 2% inflation rate it would be  roughly a 19-23% depending on the payment option you choose, and in our study case it would represent an implicit grant of 3.000€ to 3.800€, but we can't infere the actual inflation rate and such long term predictions are rather unreliable. We know, however, that given any positive inflation we'll have this implicit grant and that the higher inflation the higher grant. Now we just need to patiently wait until 2023 to check which the actual grant will have been***.

So, in conclusion, the decision about paying now or delaying the payments depends, as I said at the beginning, on unknown factors such as the prospects of inflation, the risk aversion of the lenders and their future employability and/or other income resources. The figures are based on crucial and strong assumptions, specially referring to inflation, but it may be worth and it's always interesting to take a look to what numbers have to say.

*deflation is a real danger, though, if the crisis carries on for very long, Germany is still sickly obsessed with inflation and/or more bubbles burst, but this is another point (macroeconomics and economy policy issues) and one of the reasons I DON'T give any advice.

** It is true that inflation in Spain had been traditionally high and we have quite a dysfunctional economy able to sustain high unemployment and high inflation at the same time (a phenomenon known as stagflation) but the amazingly huge unemployment suggests it won't be the case the following years: before the crisis it reached an average 3% and the last 3 years it's been constantly over 2% (2.99%, 2.37% and 2.87%), while at 2008 and 2009 it was only 1.4% and 0.8%. The slowdown of global markets, the decreasing GNP, the still overpriced housing sector and, specially, the unbearable 26% unemployment rate suggest it won't raise any more than 2%. Finally, I've taken into account that the loan is for a total 13 years and, hopefully, the depressed conditions won't last that long, so considering deflation for the next 13 years seems just unreasonable. A 2% will do.

*** And I found a way of writing a future perfect somewhere ;)

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Teaching Pills 3: teaching through ICT

"In God we trust; all others must bring data" Dr. W. Edwards Deming

In my last TP post I wrote about how you can teach with almost no material resources and in this one I'd like to show just the opposite, how you can use in a sensible way some of the huge amount of resources currently provided by the ICT. There are many websites, blogs and even apps which may help you to prepare materials, to decide teaching strategies and to support your work. The few times I have had the chance to teach myself I have relied heavily on powerpoints, dynamic graphs and maps. I have also made internet research about the subject (no matter I had it very clear in my mind), keeping an open-minded approach not only because I am a novice (which I clearly am) but because you may find extraordinary tools. Today I'm speaking just about two sites I've already used. However, before starting I'd better say two important things: firstly, these resources are a support to your lessons, but they can't substitute the teacher, it's important that you prepare yourself properly for every lesson and that you don't rely too much on your PPT or your internet connection. Questions will be asked and you ought to be ready to clearly explain them. Secondly, it's important that you adapt the resources you find to your objectives and to the stages you are working with, because a messy explanation may be worse than no explanation. Once these two warnings have been issued, let's go to the resources:

Gapminder.org: the beauty of stats

Gapminder is a website offering very nice resources. In my lessons of introductory economics to nurses (yeah, I know it sounds weird, it was nice, though) I used them to show some of the stats relating health and wealth, HIV and children by woman. They are very useful to start debates about the underlying causes behind some issues, and doing it from the scientific approach of data. However, they can be used at any level of teaching and they have this beautiful stuff about life expectancy:

We all know what life expectancy means, only that... do we know? Well, we know that it is an economic indicator very often used to measure the health of a society, and thereby, the development level of a country, but most people, specially young students, tend to think about it like if everyone in let's say Rwanda was going to live more or less 56 years, which is their current life expectancy. And everyone in the UK about 80. Of course this is the wrong way to interpret the indicator. Life expectancy is an average and, thus, it rather reflects how hard is to arrive to be old in a country, how easy is to die before your time. The guys in gapminder.org have prepared a powerpoint that explains it very clearly. Highly usable. It's worth to take a look:

http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/life-expectancy-ppt

Worldmapper.org: Put your stats on a map

This is a demographic-corrected UK map

We are used to see statistics in number or in graphics. And we are used to physical and political maps of the world. In the worldmapper website we can find maps reflecting statistics. I really like them, they set a very interesting point of view, specially regarding to international development statistics such as poverty, GDP, health, education... they are somehow impressive when you compare different regions and they give you a different sight of both the world and your surroundings.

An adaptation I made of two worldmapper.org maps to provoke debate among students: the red one is the world sized by GDP, the coloured one is the world sized by people who lives with less than 1$ a day

Of course, this two are samples I knew about because I had used them before to teach. You could also explain the carbon footprint and let the kids calculate their own one; there is plenty of sites with Maths or English games... it's up to you to use these resources and make learning a bit funnier.

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Teaching pills 2 - Fractions: Learning by playing

We are increasingly getting used to see our kids having access to a whole set of sophisticated (and expensive) tools designed to helping them study: laptops, next generation tablets and mobiles, digital blackboards, very advanced and complicated software, internet and so on. Nevertheless, I believe that the most important thing still is, and will always be, a passionate teacher and the will to learn of the students. You can encourage learning without any of these gadgets, and you can be very effective in breeding knowledge and attitudes with a pencil, somewhere to write on and a bit of creativity.

Two years ago I went to Nicaragua with an education Spanish charity and I had, among other goals, the objective of working with the local teachers in maths pedagogy. Specifically we had to work about fractions equivalency and operations, and we had to bear in mind not just the national curriculum but also the difficult conditions they face every day, almost without material means or support of any kind. That's the main reason the charity worked there. Because of the students' age, which was rather diverse, from may be 6 to young teenagers of even 15 -this is only one of the difficulties these teachers have to deal with, if you believe your job is tricky you should go there and see how they manage to teach in these conditions. Well, I wanted to focus it as a game, and one with different levels. After some weeks of thinking and reading about the question that's the game I proposed for learning fractions equivalency:

You need something to write with (say a pencil) and something to write on (say a paper). You don't need anything else. Not even a blackboard and not for sure a maths book, which they did not have most of the time. Then you make cards, or better, the kids make their own cards, and in these cards you (they) write fractions in different forms: 1/2, 2/2; 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4.... for the whole game you write percents: 25%, 50%..... numbers: 0,33; 0,4; 0,5; 0,66; 0,75....... and there is no rule saying you need to stop in 1, you can make fractions above the unit: 6/4; 12/6; 20/5........ and percents and numbers as well: 150%; 300%; 1,25; 2,5; 4............ and even mixed numbers: 2 1/4; 1 1/5....... The amount of cards you'll have at the end is up to you. It depends on the number of kids you are working with, the deepness you need to work and so forth. I like to have many, hundreds of them. You can also repeat them, make some sets, which will help you to work in groups.

And what can you do with these cards? Everything.

I proposed them 4 or 5 different games, but they could (and ought to) work out their own games with them: the more the kids played, the more used they'd get to the fractions equivalency, and the equivalency between fractions, real numbers and percents, and operations with fractions like adding and substracting. My idea was the kids working in groups -because they improve their social skills- but you can also do it individually if you believe that fits better with your conditions. Some of my proposals were: Giving a whole set of cards to each group and a) classify the fractions that are actually the same (like 2/4; 1/2; 5/10) -fractions equivalency-; b) find a number by adding fractions: (find 2? one group find it by adding 1/2 + 4/4 + 2/4 another group can use another cards 4/3 + 2/3...); c) and d) You can repeat these games with fractions and percents and numbers all together and so one can find 2 by adding 0,5 + 100% + 50/100, for instance. And in the game c they'll have a little mountain where 6/3, 4/2, 200%, 50/25 and the number 2 will be together representing the same amount. Another little mountain with 1/3; 0,33; 33%; 3/9, 2/6..... Nice, isn't it? The more they play, the better they'll understand what fractions actually mean. A second session of games, once they are used to the cards (which may as well be in the third or fourth lesson or later, depending of their rhythm) would be giving them an incomplete set of cards, and every group a different one. So, now you can create two new kind of games: 1) negotiation games, where to get to the result they'll need to negotiate with other groups to get the cards they need, while offering the cards they don't need. Interesting introduction to trade, bargain and so on -there is a sort of introduction to David Ricardo and trade theory here, eh?- and working a lot of social skills. 2) You can introduce substracting (and even other operations) to arrive to the goal number.

As a matter of fact you could make up many more games with these cards, focusing on different needs (discover the hidden card -intro to equations-; games to identify prime numbers, and so on). They'll pick it up very quickly, though, and the main target of the cards, let them get the hang of the fractions, will be achieved in just one or two sessions. Besides, they have made the game themselves, and they have learned all this while having fun, challenging their minds. You don't need  more than your will and a pencil.

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Teaching pills 1: Primary Maths. The easy way to multiply

What I love of maths teaching is that you are, may be more than in any other subject, teaching a way of thinking. To be honest I don't really know how multiplying is usually taught in the UK, but in my country in most cases it's still regretfully taught as a memoristic skill, with tables from 1 to 10 that children need to memorize and repeat until they automatically can throw up the result of any single-digit multiplication. In my opinion this is not only a rough and boring way of learning something, it also denies the opportunity of logical and deductive thinking to the children and spoils a chance to reinforce their self-confidence and their understanding of how maths work, the relationship between adding and multiplying, substracting and dividing, and so on. In short, wrong way of multiplying teaching. Moreover, it is hard, takes time and can create an ugly -and mistaken- impression that maths are boring. I bet I can teach any kid who pays attention to multiply in just one session and making it fun. I have tried it before with kids in Nicaragua, kids who had a fairly large lack of previous knowledge -which might have been good, at the end- and most of them got it quickly and, with a few hours of practising, were able to do it by themselves. Of course I haven't "invented" (though "discovered" would be more accurate) this teaching strategy, I am sure it's broadly used, with subtle differences, all over the world. Twenty-five years ago I was taught to multiply with part of this at my school Aire Lliure, which used to be -at least at its origin- an impressive education cooperative, a school based on a sort of libertarian pedagogy, teching how to think instead of what to think. I became a fan and I have just completed it.

Here it comes: My easy way of multiplying that promotes deductive thinking is based in two well-known mnemonic rule -the 9 and 5 rule- which most teachers use to teach to multiply by 5 and 9; the natural ability of mentally adding few times (up to 4); and memorizing just two multiplications: 6x6= 36 and 7x8 = 56. Once you know this, and supposing you are able to add and substract, you have all you need to mentally deduce any single-digit multiplication. Children don't need to memorize anything else and, more important, they'll feel good every time they deduce an unknown one, reinforcing their confidence and their maths liking, which may be really useful for their future.

I guess most of you have got it straight away, but I'm going to explain it with a bit more of detail just in case anyone studied laws -sorry, solicitor and lawyer friends, I know the truth can be painful. First, the mnemonic rules: You all know multiplying by five is easy, just the half ten (v.gr. 8x5 = [the half ten of 8] 40). Most of you might also know that multiplying by nine is very easy indeed, just the previous ten and what's missing to get to nine. It is to say: if you want to multiply, for instance, 6x9, you take the previous ten of six (5, fifty-something), and the unit is what's missing to make nine: 4. So, 6x9= 54. This works. Ok, we've got every single number multiplied by 5 or 9. Then, adding up to four times can be done mentally without effort. So, we have deduced every single digit multiplied by 1 to 5 and by 9. Now we have these two ops, 6x6=36 and 7x8=56, which we'd better memorize (we could eventually add them but I have realized it's a bit tricky for children) and now we have a supporting point to get to every single-digit multiplication directly or by just adding or substracting the number once. Think about any single-digit multiplication, let's say 6x7? the child mental process would go: Ok, I know 6x6=36, so if I add 6 I'll have 6x7! 36+6=42. Good. 8x3? Ok, eight and eight, sixteen, and eight twenty-four. Easy. 8x6? Humpf, well I know 8x7=56, so if I substract 8 I'll have 8x6 -> 56-8=48. Or either I know 6x6=36 I add six twice and I'll have 8x6 -> 36+6=42 +6= 48. And so on, and so forth.

 It's a perfect system, and despite it may look a bit complicated in writing it's very easy indeed to do mentally. What I love of this teaching strategy is that it focus not in memoristic learning but in deductive abilities. It relates multiplying to adding, which is nice, and to substracting also, which is even better because it gives the child a more comprehensive understanding of mathematic relationships, but the important point is that it reinforces a lot their self-confidence and transforms the maths in a deductive game, something that is worth and fun. As it should be.

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Good (and bad) practice among advertisement in Charities / International Development

A short time ago I saw an AWESOME advert, which had been deployed as part of a campaign on safe water supply by UNICEF Sweden. As this and the following are all public advertisements I have felt free to reproduce them here:

I really loved the advert for many reasons and I would use it with no doubt as an example of good practice in charity advertising whether I had to give a lesson about the subject (hopefully some day, why not?) or explain to a friend what I believe should be done in such cases. In my opinion it has a perfect sensitization approach, it is indeed shocking as it must be, while being very simple; it is far from taking any advantage or making an unfair use of the beneficiaries; it is also far away from the moral blackmail that still today is regrettably used sometimes -bombing the tired eyes of the audience with unbearable extreme situations-; technically is perfect; and besides it makes you mull over your preconceptions about which actually are the most harmful dangers the children in empoverished countries face, so, it raises the awareness of the people.

Sensible people might think that among the charities should be a strong commitment with these values, that they'd be specially careful when using pictures or messages, for they are not typical companies trying to fight for customers, they are rather social agents engaged to sensitize the population. To be honest, most of them are aware of that and create nice examples like the bad-water one. Some of them do not. There seems to be an increasing competition between them to get the confidence (and the money) of the largest possible part of the goodwill market -instead of spreading this "market" (sorry for the word) and, therefore, they appear to forget the awareness role and have a competitive approach based on the market rules- say almost-no-rules. Thus, they'd fight to take the money to their projects, and make use of any mean. I'll ilustrate my opinion with two samples.

Please, bear in mind that the following examples have been found after barely one hour of internet research and that I don't intend to critisize any individual charity, but only the way they have tried to advert themselves in this specific poster. I'm sure we could have found adverts alike from many other organisations and good adverts from these ones. I must also thank my fellows and friends Dinka Acevedo and César Jiménez for their contribution.

 First sample: it is incredibly easy to find campaigns making a reproachable use of the beneficiaries, even children, to advert the NGO.

This little girl has eventually become the Hussain Bolt of the medical aid, and the sponsors wanted to be sure their logo was clearly readable. The smile of the lifeguard could also have been used in a toothpaste campaign. I am sure they were able to promote themselves without having to use a child in this rough way. For my standards this is an unfair use of her, even though I have found people thinking otherwise. Anyway, we can do it better than that.

Then, we can find the moral-blackmail-strategies. This would generally consist of appealing to your feelings of guilt by bombing your eyes with dreadful pictures of abject poverty, sickness, misery or hunger. We all have seem them, since they were very tipical in the 70s and specially the Ethiopia's famine was widely used to raise funds. I don't argue that the funds were needed and getting them fastly by any means could eventually have a positive effect in the short term, but they used these kind of pictures far too much and this overuse became in a mental block of the donors (no bother they call them partners, it is part of the marketing). We can find more subtle or imaginative samples though, and I have found one that I believe illustrates exactly what I am trying to explain. It's in Spanish and, even though the picture is quite expressive by itself, I can't help translating the text. It reads: "One of them has got house, food, water, education and medical care. Guess who?" and underneath "Help us to change it". I sincerely hope that this poster has meant one or two sacked people either in the NGO or in the publicity agency. I don't know what annoys me more, if the small child or the glowing dog. This sort of adverts try to steadily blackmail the audience and this is ethically unacceptable and should never be done. It is not giving any useful information, nor raising awareness, just guilt-feeling.

I think that the charity advertisement should be conceived to change attitudes more than raising money, or at least change them while raising money. They must be carefully designed to present the utmost respect to the objective population and to the audience at the same time. They should move to actual actions, for small they were, which help change things for good. In this respect there are indeed many actions we can perform from here to change things, such as ethical shopping, political lobbyism, voluntary involvement or reducing our consumption (of goods, energy). We should be showing far more of what we can do and a lot less of what we can't avoid to happen, since this is counterproductive. And, last but not least, they should avoid creating a perverted picture of the truth. To illustrate what I mean and to finish with a thoughtful smile, another awesome brand new campaign, now on video: Africa for Norway, RADI_AID!!!

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Incongruència fiscal

M'ha vingut la dèria de la incongrüència perquè resulta que en passar-me d'un treball precari a altre aquí a Londres no vaig tindre la deguda prudència d'informar-me'n de la normativa fiscal i laboral i no vaig demanar la meua P-45: aquí quan canvies de treball has de demanar un paper on l'empresa de la que eixes informa a l'empresa a la que vas (i de pas a la hisenda pública, que és el HM Revenue) de quant t'ha pagat i quant ha cotitzat per tu. Sense eixe paper (que de fet en són tres) la nova empresa cotitza per tu una barbaritat en un codi d'emergència, per si de cas abans de ser cambrer eres enginyer atòmic o director de multinacional i has de pagar una renda en simptonia. Cobrant el salari mínim, 6,08/hora, suporte una presió fiscal directa, tot comptat, del 34%. Mentres tant el candidat republicà Mitt Romney guanya tretze milions de dòlars a l'any i diu que paga una mitjana del 13%. I li ha de semblar molt perquè està boig per abaixar impostos.

Els estudiants de la U. de Suffolk fan uns dibuixets xulos

A Grècia un periodista va publicar les dades de 2000 evasors fiscals i la policia no va tardar en reaccionar i detindre... al periodista.

Good question, i  per què no???

Aquests conundrums fiscals i el fet que Amancio Ortega pague els impostos de Zara Online a Irlanda, mentres que dóna 20 milions d'euros a caritat a Espanya, arreplegant adhesions entusiastes de tota mena, m'ha fet meditar* darrerament sobre competència fiscal ("competència" en la seua acepció econòmica de "pegar-se d'òsties i abaixar preus" no en la  jurídica de "a qui li toca perseguir a este cràpula"). La possibilitat que la llei europea atorga d'establir-se en el país que vulgues mentres que cada país té una estructura fiscal diferent genera un incentiu monstruós (en les dues accepcions del terme) per a abaixar els impostos a aquells que poden decidir fàcilment on fixar el domicili fiscal, és a dir grans empreses i rics, mentres s'apujen compensatòriament per aquells que no podem, bàsicament treballadors assalariats, autònoms i xicotets empresaris. I, de bestreta, cada vegada més passar la grossa de la recaptació a impostos indirectes, que són els més regressius i els menys visibles -acontentant així a rics i miops, respectivament.

És impossible mantenir un sistema fiscal en franca competència a la baixa i alhora un estat del benestar mínimament funcional. Pareix obvi, però hi ha gent com Miguel Sebastián, autoanomenat socialista, que estan tan obcecats en demostrar que la funció redistributiva de l'Estat es fa per la via de la despesa i no de la recaptació (ojo, que en això tenen raó) que es despisten de que per la via de la recaptació es fa també molta redistribució... però al revès. És a dir, la recaptació fiscal arreu del món (també autoanomenat) desenvolupat és generalment regressiva, com demostren centenars d'estudis, i per tant redistribueix sí, però de les classes baixes i mitjanes cap a les classes altes. I encara hi ha qui, com Sebastian, defensen un tipus únic de l'IRPF -diguem un 25% o un 30%, tant fa- sigues ric como Amancio o pobre com jo. Això necessàriament faria el sistema més regressiu, encara que s'empenyen en que llevant deduccions i apujant el mínim exempt no seria tan greu. I per què defensen este canvi? Diuen que per facilitar l'enteniment i pagament de l'impost i evitar incentius perversos. [Un exemple: Fa uns anys estava de moda el problema de l'escala. Com l'IRPF es paga per trams -de tant a tant un 25%, de tant a tant un 30%...- hi havia un incentiu pervers en les fronteres d'un tram a l'altre per amagar certs ingressos i no passar de divisió. Això, no obstant, és més vell que les màquines d'escriure i els vídeos Beta i hui en dia l'estructura de l'impost directe podria i deuria ser contínua i creixent -és a dir tant guanyes, tant et toca i si guanyes mil més, un 0,1% més, o un 0,01% o el que corresponga, segons la pendent de la funció que s'haja decidit. Aquesta pendent seria el que s'hauria de debatre entre polítics i tècnics i el que la ciutadania hauria de poder votar. Per l'amor del nostre senyor, si les iaies tenen facebook i la declaració de la renda no la fa ningú, la fa un programeta d'ordinador via esborrany -la majoria- o programa PADRE.]

És veritat que és possible que un tipus únic no fora catastròfic, si va acompanyat de llevar les deduccions per vivenda i fons de pensions, però és evident que agreujaria la regressivitat del sistema. I a canvi de què? Els defensors del canvi tenen fe en que d'aquesta manera els evasors evadirien menys, supose que basant-se en que ara evadeixen perquè fan una mena de desobediència civil a la progressivitat. Jo sóc menys psicològicament profund en les meues anàlisis: Crec que evadeixen perquè poden. Perquè no se'ls persegueix ni castiga, i, encara més, perquè se'ls faciliten instruments per evadir. Eixe és EL problema fiscal.

Isak Andin, amo de Mango, explicant quant pensa pagar d'impostos enguany 

I a tot això als rics, plim. Ells no paguen impostos, i quan en paguen ho fan perquè volen i en la quantitat que els ve en gana. Els milionaris (d'euros) tenen paradissos fiscals en llocs exòtics i, a dia de hui, en tots els països moderns i xulos. En Espanya tenen les SICAV, aberració fiscal que paga un 1% d'impost de societats, però en el Regne Unit també tenen la City London Corporation que fa que les grans entitats financeres no només paguen el que els rote sinó que fins i tot queden fora de tot escrutini fiscal. Està Suïssa i els més coneguts paradissos fiscals off-shore, com les Cayman o l'Illa de Mann, que no està on Crist va perdre l'espardenya, sinó en Europa, corona britànica. Però tots els països més o menys juguen a salvar els rics de pagar. Les dades dels rics segons s'autodeclaren a Hacienda són de risa: el 10% més ric està a partir dels 39.000€ a l'any i l'1% més ric a partir dels 99.000€/any. Sí, clar. Òbviament tota la manta de mega-rics no paga IRPF o paga el que li ve en gana. Aleshores, en estos temps de crisi i mesures apocalíptiques, per què no està en el debat públic una bateria de mesures dràstiques per evitar esta monumental estafa fiscal? La meua resposta a això també és senzilla: Perquè no hi ha debat públic, és una paròdia enfocada pels mitjans on els interessa i cega cap el que no els interessa. Però altres defensen una altra resposta més tècnica: Perquè si intentàrem fer pagar més (o algo) els rics se n'anirien on no els tocaren la butxaca. És a dir, l'argument de la competència fiscal per a justificar que deixem que ens la claven. I tornem al problema matriu: No es pot tindre un sistema financer i comercial global i un sistema fiscal local en competència a la baixa amb altres. Què es pot fer? Jo, de moment, m'he apuntat a ATTAC. He descartat per ara matar rics perquè no tinc kalashnikov propi i sóc un poc gos.

* treballar de cambrer dóna temps per a pensar humilment**. Els maleïts insisteixen en que no puc llegir darrere de la barra, per si ve algun client. Ja veus tu, què tiquis-miquis. Si ve algún client, que s'espere, que jo llisc ràpid!

** els que em coneixeu de temps sabeu que sóc un tipo molt humil. El més humil del món diria jo!

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