El negrito del batey

[NewsWhore]

Former Central Bank assistant governor and economist, Felix Calvo, takes a look at Dominican society in general and the start-up of the Family Health Program announced by the government in particular. Years ago, a popular merengue song called "El negrito del batey" by Johnny Ventura looked at the old Spanish custom of disdaining manual labor. Long ago, in Spain, any sort of manual labor was not for the noble or anyone who had pretensions of nobility. As a result, the state was forced to provide for this parasitic group. The famous merengue symbolizes the person up from the batey (cane cutter settlement) with high hopes for living well but without having to work ("...God created work, as a punishment..."). As a social criticism, the economist says that perhaps it could be argued that the man was fed up with being exploited in the cane fields, or his determination was fed by the fact that he saw others (possibly whites) who lived well without working. The second hypothesis does not include the fact that the white man had studied and worked with his mind and not his hands. The economist says that this merengue came to mind now that the government is trying to implement changes in the public health system. Funding for the new system comes from an obligatory deduction from every worker's pay. If we are talking about a family, where both the man and the woman work, Calvo says both have to pay the tax although one salary earner is enough for the family to receive the benefits of the health plan. He says that when both partners work there is a double tax with the additional one going into a "solidarity fund". If a person has two jobs, both paychecks are docked for the health plan. Again, the second one goes into the fund for the public sector. The public sector, the Government, with its income should pay for the sectors that are excluded from the program's services. The government's income comes almost exclusively from tax deduction on payrolls, inheritance, business earnings and VAT monies. Therefore, the worker pays several taxes - both direct and indirect - to the government. Nonetheless, the worker, according to Calvo, now has to pay more taxes, and illegal ones at that. He is referring to the super-workers and the couples who pay twice, since the tax is backed by an administrative decree and not a law. He ends his editorial by saying that the more you try to get ahead, working two jobs or having your spouse work, the more you become a victim of the health program, since you are deprived of a significant proportion of your earnings that will go to someone who, of course, doesn't have much interest in working. This is how the Dominican Republic promotes the idea that work was made by God to punish us.

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