Eiropas humānās palīdzības pakas. Foto: Inta Puriņa, F64
For readers of this column it is well-known that I support the Latvian austerity programme - not because I get some perverse satisfaction from seeing the budget axe in use but because Latvian public spending had been allowed to enter a completely unsustainable path in the ‘fat years'. I have mentioned it e.g. here.
Some austerity measures are also needed for 2012, fine, but this one I cannot support. In order to cut 17 mill. LVL it is proposed that the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) of some 40-45 LVL per month should be removed from the state budget and be made the responsibility of the municipalities instead. This is not good economics and it definitely lacks in fairness - here a few arguments.
Without exactly knowing it I am sure that recipients of GMI are not evenly spread out across the country. If so, some municipalities will be very hard hit while others will not. But why should municipalities with many such people bear the burden of what is a national issue? Centralized burden-sharing is one part of national solidarity where less prosperous areas benefit from more prosperous ones.
