This weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza is headlined “You Will Earn More.” The euphoria continues, unblemished by debate, assessment, macroeconomic statistics or rationality in the body of the story. “Składka na ubezpieczenie rentowe” will drop from 6.5% of your gross wage to 3.5%. That’s a fall of nearly a half! The exclamation mark was used by the newspaper. On the front page! In a news article! About tax! Tax! Reporting the progress of the taxation law change, later in the article the newspaper writes: “no one voted against it!” Yes: no one! The bill now has to go through the senate and the president: “And they must hurry!” Oh yes, hurry, hurry, hurry so we can get our paws on the money the taxman has been stealing from us all these years and frittering away on sick pay, unemployment benefit, pensions and other such frippery frapperies. “Skladka na ubezpieczenie rentowe” means social insurance, more or less.

The anti welfare state propaganda continues on inside pages. A story on page 33 has the curious headline “Today is the Taxpayer’s Holiday.” It reports the preposterous spin by the Adam Smith Institute that all the income earned before June 16th goes to the state and that from now on you, the worker, are earning for yourself. The Adam Smith Institute is entitled to its own beliefs on how Poland should distribute its income but surely a repsectable newspaper should treat these wild opinions with a little distance, and not write, in sentence one of the tendentiously headlined tale, “Tax freedom day comes earlier than ever this year: June 16th”.

On an entirely unrelated note, doctors, teachers and nurses are on strike in Poland because of low pay.