Surprise! Are We To Pay Taxes?

I heard something incredible in the news - the tax supported medical care will be available only to those paying the Income Tax! More to that - soon may all the tax supported services be available only to those paying the Tax!

Is this the first, however feeble, attempt of the government to convince the people that they really want those taxes? Up to this point, we have seen only the opposite actions - the government has actually done everything possible to make people wonder why on earth are they paying anything at all to a government whose apparent concern is to missuse the taxpayers' money.

Raising tax rates during the times when the economical burden is too high even so conveys the clear message to the nation that the government wants the gray economy to spread. Buying the useless minesweepers - spending millions on them, building concrete bridges for the price of golden ones and many other top stupidity projects - communicate to me and many other compatriots the message that the government already has too much money at their disposal.

Borrowing huge amounts internationally instead of stimulating the domestic economy means in fact selling the country and putting the burden of debt to the generations to come. They make the situation even worse reneging from the promises given to the lenders after having taken the money.

Seeing all this - are you running with your hard earned cash to the officials to give away what your children may need for the school or medicine? Are you demanding the recipes for every product or service? Are you denouncing on your neighbor selling a handful of hand-picked berries or mushrooms without authorities knowing that?

For those who might not know, it is the "official" standard for Latvia - to have two different prices for everything - the much higher one is if you need the "papers" i.e. the invoices and receits as a proof of a transaction. The other is much lower, without the "papers", and you don't expect any tax paid for that.

But that's just the one side of the problem. There is a deeper one: whom to vote for in the next election? Is it at all possible to find enough wise people able to lead the country? Or are we all really just the scum that the earlier occupations left behind having eradicated the living power of the Latvian nation? Are we just waiting to give up our independence to a new occupation, which would last this time forever?