Subsidies only for the rich.And housing in the Šluknov region only for healthy, others are earnings for funerals.Anna Vančová and Štěpán Chába's pre -election commentary

Subsidies only for the rich.And housing in the Šluknov region only for healthy, others are earnings for funerals.Anna Vančová and Štěpán Chába's pre -election commentary

07.10.2021

Photo: Illustration photo Jitka Jeslínková

Description: So where are we going this year? After blue?

So who do I throw it to this year? A few days until the election and I have no idea. I used to be a loyal voter of the Pirates, but they strangled me first with their European "union" landing, then - as a citizen of Prague - with the complete incompetence of the pirate leadership of the metropolis (Hřib satan, Scheinherr his infernal deputy for collapsing transport).

So we agreed with Štěpán Cháb on a small pre-election test. What does it consist of? We will describe to you and them (politicians) very roughly our current situation as voters. I am so-called middle-income, he is poor. I'm old, he's middle-aged, etc. (Why isn't there anyone young, healthy and rich? Because we don't know anyone like that.) Then we'll add what the state has annoyed us with in the last 14 days. And we ask individual parties and coalitions what they think they can help us with. Which, with your kind permission, we will comment on.

I really don't know this year, Pirates. Photo with permission: Ivan Bartoš

Each separately, because we are far from having the same opinions on everything. Although those with frequent political discussions, passionate, loud and full of unpublishable expressions without a flood of stars, have come a few cents closer to each other over the years. Which does not matter at all, the ethos of Krajské listů.cz consists, among other things, in the fact that absolute consensus is unnatural, useless and dictated from above; we are not a dictatorship - think what you want, if you are able to reproduce it relevantly and argue properly, write it.

Really? And the 30 thousand covid victims? Photo with permission: Jan ´Svetr Hamáček

And why don't we preach 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'? And do you see a John Fitzgerald Kennedy here?

The lady begins. My name is Anna Vančová, I am 59 years old, I have two adult children (32 and 33 years old) who live with me and my husband in the same household. The husband has been working as a fitter all his life at DP hl. city ​​of Prague and earns quite decently. My daughter works for Krajské listy.cz and for Parlamentní listy.cz (she does something completely different for each), my son is a disabled pensioner with autism spectrum disorder. As the owner, editor-in-chief, editor, proofreader and cleaner (I have the editorial office at home), I 'take' 29,000 per month. Krajské listy.cz makes a living, but there is no question of profit. I am self-employed, I admit everything, I pay everything. I own half of a small apartment villa in Prague, which I take care of, and a log cabin above Štěchovice, which my aunt gave me.

'Subsidies are unfair, absolutely unclear, they keep stealing and distorting the market, subsidies are pure evil.' This is how I would briefly describe what has eaten me up the most this weekend. I've been thinking about it for a long time, but this time I hit the wall head on. What's going on?

Although my villa (for the sake of simplicity I will own it, the other half belongs to my aunt, who is 93 years old and her health is no longer good for her) is now worth at least 50 million, rather more, mortgages are given for income. And it comes out to me - according to the bank figures - relatively low. Because that villa does not earn anything, neither in accounting nor in fact. For the last year and a half, I have been repairing one floor (we have 4 floors and 6 apartment units), whose tenant, an old man, died. His apartment is 150 square meters and nobody has touched it since the war. For 4 million mortgaged (we both have a mortgage, me and my daughter), I had it renovated, two smaller, very nice apartments were created. Both rented, the rents just cover the mortgage payments. Also, my aunt lives here, who as a pensioner does not pay anything, the biggest items are for the gas we use for heating and water. The other two apartments earn the rest, heating, water, garden maintenance and various trinkets that every owner must.

Plan A was to repair the second floor for 4 million. Even ours, about a hundred meters long, which is in the roof. We don't have an apartment, but a mansard. Which is a non-insulated space, 14 degrees in the winter in the apartment, in the summer, when it's hot, a fairly fair 32 degrees Celsius. But the reality of the ever-increasing prices of construction work and materials threw a pitchfork at this god-like plan.

Photo by Markéta Vančová

The biggest problem in our apartment is the glazed windows. Completely hin. Floors the same. So we decided on plan B, that we will repair our apartment gradually, room by room, as soon as we manage to raise some money. We had to completely give up on the intended maisonette by penetrating the attic, as part of the reconstruction, we at least prepared the attic for the maisonette, which entails stripping it - for a nice 800,000, but don't buy it... And now the windows. There are 11 of them plus balcony doors. If we wanted Velkopański casement windows, original, the repair of one of them would cost 45 thousand. Fine, I say to myself, I'll settle for plastic bags, let the preservationists have a crunch. Couldn't I get some kind of subsidy? After all, by changing the windows I will save a considerable amount of energy.

In October they issue another New Green Savings. Answer? Could not. Why? Because I can't repair the house gradually and wait for the subsidy. Because I would not only have to make – during operation – all the windows in the entire villa, I would also have to insulate the villa. Pay everything and then hope that New Green will give me back up to 50% of my savings. I repeat, my daughter and I also take 49,000, we support our son, the barrack does not make money, we pay off a mortgage of over 32,000, and we will for a long time. So pure sci-fi.

Next to us, rich developers are renovating a very similar villa. They can get subsidies, they do it all at once, they also have rainwater containers in the ground, they covered the whole house with polystyrene. They bought the villa for 35 million for their brother, they have already put at least the same amount into the building. So the state will reimburse them part of the costs (you can buy an apartment there for at least 25 million) with the help of New Green Savings. It is not surprising then that Agrofert is the largest recipient of subsidies as such in the Czech Republic.

And I ask: is this the right philosophy? That subsidies are exclusively for the rich? Of course, paid from the taxes of all of us, including mine and Štěpán, who is saluted every morning by the sound of church mice.

What did some of the respondents answer us?

ČSSD: "Subsidies are not inherently bad, they just have to be very respectful to whom and to what extent they are provided. In the opinion of the ČSSD, subsidies must not end up as gifts for large corporations. National and European subsidies must go only to small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of the Czech economy. In our opinion, large companies should be helped strictly only in the form of loans or guarantees, but not with direct subsidies. This applies to both national and European subsidies.

It is also necessary that only fair applicants can draw subsidies, they must be used adequately, not misused. It is necessary to ensure that companies based in tax havens cannot apply for subsidies and state contracts or support from short-term work."

Vančová: Ok, I agree, and how do you intend to arrange it? If you've been in government for years, why haven't you done something about it a long time ago?

Trikolora Svobodní Soukromníci: "The Trikolora Svobodní Soukromníci formation wants to fundamentally reduce the rate of redistribution at the Czech, let alone European, level. We are convinced that the state should be lean and efficient, which is why we want to launch an anti-bureaucratic revolution, abolish or limit three dozen state institutions and offices, we want to abolish or merge some ministries and thus save about 140 billion CZK in the first year alone. It follows that we also want to cancel the vast majority of subsidies (with the exception of agriculture), which anyway only distort the market and are intended for pre-selected groups of beneficiaries, which strengthens the level of corruption in the Czech Republic."

Vančová: I am a right-winger in this, so I agree.

Not only with the subsidies, it's all upside down... Photo with permission: David Černý

Urza: “Subsidies are evil; they distort the market and make people unable to make decisions about their money. The consequence of this is that a number of projects that people are really interested in (manifested by the fact that they would be willing to pay for them voluntarily) cannot be created because the state takes money from these people and then subsidizes projects that they did not choose (and they would not be interested in paying for them voluntarily).”

Vančová: I am a right-winger to an anarchist in this, so again, I fully agree.

Mr. continues. Štěpán Cháb, 40 years old, family of six, I'm the only one with an income. A house for a personal mortgage (an excellent thing, thanks to which we do not have to pay high interest rates to the banks, but pay only the real value of the house, I highly recommend it). Income, all taxed at the Inland Revenue, around 30,000, with half going towards house expenses, utilities, health insurance and similar junk. The remaining approximately 15,000 goes to support the six people in our household. I don't deal with windows, even though I'm completely missing a few on my house. Now the priority is the drowned mole in the well - so renovating the well. A hole in the roof will follow. So for now, windows are whims of the distant future.

Photo by Štěpán Cháb

I will devote myself to a completely different problem, which frankly scares me. Because we live in Šluknovsk, we have a shortage of medical facilities, there is a lack of doctors and specialists, the waiting lists are disproportionate. I will give an example. I have had six heart attacks (a genetic gift from my ancestors). After the last heart attack, the cardiologist invited me for a check-up until the next year. The heart attack took place in June 2019, the check-up was in April 2020. It's not enough: If I have a heart attack in the evening (which has happened to me three times already), I go to the hospital for a whole hour and a half, while the person is transferred from ambulance to ambulance on old gasoline ones half way pump. We have a hospital here. But several years out of order, bankrupt and without equipment or employees. And so, we from Šluknovsko go to the district hospital in Děčín, which is overloaded because of this. What with this? No one advises, just shrugs. We pay for our health insurance in full every month, but we don't even have half the care compared to other regions.

My teeth caught me a year ago. The pain is excruciating, I called all the dental offices, they are all full. And so I have Sarajevo in my mouth, because the dentists don't accept. And, it must be added, the vast majority of dentists are people of retirement age. So it will be worse. I am looking for one specialist within the family (I will keep the field to myself), he is not taking, full, hopelessly full. It's not, it won't be.

And so I ask, and I can't forgive myself for it: How do political parties intend to solve the inequality in the availability of basic and professional medical equipment? Are there really better and worse castes in our republic?

ČSSD: "Regarding the topic of the availability of healthcare, our primary goal is to prevent its privatization or any consideration of charging for the Czech healthcare system, which would further worsen its accessibility for broad sections of the population. We must do everything to make health care accessible not only to people in larger cities, but also in the countryside. We want to bring general practitioners and dentists back to rural areas. Those interested in such doctors will be paid for their specialized education, and in cooperation with the region we will build new surgeries in the countryside and in more remote locations.

We cannot do without high-quality, accessible and modern healthcare in the 21st century, and we must do everything to ensure that it is not only the privilege of urban centers, but also of smaller settlements. We will promote a network of publicly guaranteed healthcare facilities (ambulatory and inpatient care), which will guarantee the availability of care for patients. Furthermore, we also intend to introduce a unified system for monitoring waiting times for important medical procedures, with the obligation of medical facilities to publish this data. The goal is to achieve equally accessible health care in all regions of our country by 2025 and to reduce the number of medical procedures by a third."

Cháb: I like social democracy. It belongs to the Czech political scene in every way. But what they said in their answer - "we will push through, we intend to, the goal is..." seems comical to me. So what were they doing in the government for those eight years, that it's all still in the plan, and not in the list of finished and working. The sad thing is that nothing major will simply change in the tucked away regions. Healthcare will go to hell.

Subsidies only for the rich. And housing on Šluknovska only for the healthy, the others are income for undertakers. Pre-election commentary of Anna Vančová and Štěpán Cháb

Láďa Hruška for premier! Photo with permission: Pavel Novotný

Trikolora Svobodní Soukromníci: "When it comes to health care, among other things, we want to change the current system of reimbursement decrees, which fundamentally discriminates the provision of health care in small and peripheral parts of the Czech Republic. Ultimately, the result is that a small hospital in the periphery receives, for the same medical procedure, 3.5 times less payment from the health insurance companies than what a hospital in Prague or the Central Bohemia region receives for the exact same medical procedure. We have already filed a very extensive constitutional complaint against this discrimination in the past."

Cháb: And here we have the value of a person in Prague and the value of a person in the region. But would that, if anything, be reflected in the amount of payment for health insurance? Not there, we are equal there. The state has neglected regional development for thirty years. And here are the consequences. No one of judgment wants to go to the region, because he voluntarily moves into the gray zone of the insignificant.

Even in Prague, not everyone is equal. For example, the owner of this car is a little straighter. Illustration photo: Regina Rösslerová

Urza: "Unfortunately, the state is usurping a monopoly on, among other things, the provision of health care; and as we know, monopolies are expensive and inefficient, and the state is no exception. So the solution is de-monopolization and the possibility of opt-out for those who are interested; and not only in healthcare.

We have committed to submit every mandate that we could possibly win in the elections. We do not want to rule; we don't want to force our opinions on anyone. The purpose of our candidacy is to peacefully persuade people and conduct a dialogue on issues that we consider essential; especially about the overgrown state, which is still growing, making decisions for us in more and more areas, thereby taking away responsibility for our lives, and thus freedom. There is a need to change the paradigm according to which we as a society try to solve practically all major problems with new regulations and laws; with this trend, unfortunately, we are moving inexorably towards totality."

Cháb: I watched Urza for half a year. He studied his thoughts and visions, watched his discussions on YouTube for dinner. His vision, in my opinion, is selfishly capitalistic, dangerous and, in his person, strongly manipulative (his conversations are conducted aggressively, he grabs words and tries to grill his opponent often on marginal absurdities). His approach to healthcare is again built on the belief that the market will take care of its people. But he won't care. And if it takes care of it, it will only take care of those big capitalists who will have the money. However, anarcho-capitalism certainly does not guarantee that everyone will do well. Rather, it guarantees that most will do very poorly. Healthcare would thus become an even bigger business than it is today. If, of course, the majority survived the oligarchic pogrom and the battles of the private armies of various rich people. Urza's system assumes a high degree of civility and respect for other people. However, she is missing and will always be missing.

I will eat you all. Illustration photo by Kamil Obluk

And what follows from this? First, the honorable politicians have us… yes, right there. At the butt. We approached the Czech Social Democratic Party, Pirates and Mayors (Pirstan), Spolu ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09), ANO 2011, The Pledge - the civic movement of Robert Šlachta, Freedom and Direct Democracy, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, the Tricolor of Free Privateers. Štěpán added Urza, I added the Czech Crown, the monarchists. Apart from the three listed, no one else bothered to reply to us (and to you, the roughly three thousand readers (beware, update, the average per comment last month was 11,150 reads) who regularly read Štěpán's comments). Jen Sadílková from Pirates; they say they could do it by the end of the week 😊, the speed is really digital. The email said, among other things: "What do you think about subsidies, especially about the fact that New Green Savings is only for the rich?" What do you think about the fact that in the Šluknovský promontory, a normal person practically cannot get access to the state health service? And what would you do about it as a political entity? Look - the political programs of ALL parties promise the blue sky to ALL citizens, so we ask for ourselves - what would you do for us?" (We wanted to give the political subjects a chance to express themselves once more concretely, not just with sloppy platitudes.) Answers we got - lautr nothing. It does not mean that we will not go to vote. We will go. Unfortunately, the lesser evil.

Introduced by: Anička Vančová

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