Privilege

SALZBURG — This Austrian city of salt and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a 299-kilometer drive from Vienna, 50 kilometers longer than the distance between Manila and Baguio City. But it took our double-decker tour bus only four hours, including a half-hour stop midway for breakfast, to get here from the Opera House in the heart of Vienna.

It was a smooth drive all the way, even with road maintenance work in some areas. The easy access allows day tours from the Austrian capital to this city, boosting tourism; you leave Vienna at 7 a.m. and return at 8 p.m.

Equally good for motorists: no tollways throughout. Austria uses taxpayers’ money to build quality roads for taxpayers. Because no private firm has to recoup its hefty investment in road construction and, even more important for any self-respecting investor, turn a handsome profit, taxpayers are not required to pay for a service that the state should provide to the masses.

I have always supported the idea of allowing private investors to turn a profit. The larger the potential return on investment, the greater the incentive to sustain the investment, expand it and improve services. Healthy profits fuel productivity, which is good overall for the country.

But in a developing country, the government should carefully pick the areas where the private sector can invest and turn a healthy profit, on which the government can then automatically collect a value-added tax. The new rates, up sharply this month because of the 12 percent toll VAT, on two major road arteries north and south of Metro Manila are murder on the income of the average Pinoy family.

Paying P250 every day just to use the only major access between home and office is too much for a middle class, average-size family, even if only one car is used by the working parents and two or three kids. With fuel expenses factored in, transportation expenses can total more than P20,000 a month.

It’s not too bad if public transportation is efficient and adequate. But taking mass transport can turn out to be even more expensive for a family of five, and can double or triple the travel time.

It also isn’t too bad if taxpayers can see that their money is being used judiciously. That backbreaking toll VAT should be used to build more and better roads (with no toll), roads that don’t disintegrate in the first heavy downpour after several months of repair.

If President Aquino is serious in his campaign for good governance, his administration should launch a taxpayer awareness campaign. Specifically, the campaign should inform all Filipinos – including everyone who does not pay income tax – that because of VAT, everyone now has a financial stake in seeing public funds used judiciously.

And because part of everyone’s earnings now goes to the state through VAT on almost all types of goods and services, everyone should demand the wise use of public funds. Taxpayers’ money shouldn’t be wasted on lawmakers’ junkets, for example, or the upkeep of presidential advisers’ bodyguards.

There should be greater public indignation when the newly repaired Osmeña flyover melts in the rain. Or when incompetent, undeserving individuals are hired chiefly based on the right connections.

The taxpayer awareness campaign should remind everyone that all Filipinos deserve good governance.

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The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II introduced merit promotions and hired government personnel regardless of class and ethnicity.

I mention Joseph II because he also abolished serfdom in his realm. As part of his efforts at egalitarianism, he ordered all bodies buried in mass graves, without coffins or embalmment. (He himself was buried in his own tomb at the Imperial Crypt.)

Among those affected was Salzburg’s most famous son, who was buried in an unmarked grave outside the center of Vienna following his death at the age of 35. Even Mozart’s widow did not know the exact spot where he was buried.

At least Mozart’s birthplace, at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, is clearly marked and preserved.

A day tour in this lovely city gives you a glimpse into why the masses of Europe periodically staged uprisings against the abuses of the tiny ruling class.

Salzburg, the town of salt, was built on fortunes founded on the salt mines. Salt mining in Hallein has been traced as far back as 7,000 years ago. South of Salzburg are gold mines; at one time the mines accounted for 10 percent of global gold production.

Salt was called white gold at the time. It’s crystalline rock salt, sprinkled liberally on bread, and too liberally on the Austro-Hungarian goulash.

Mozart’s birthplace, located on what is now Salzburg’s high-end shopping mile in the heart of the city, sits at the foot of a mountain, at the top of which is an ancient fortress constructed when separation of church and state was an alien concept.

Prince Archbishop Eberhard built the first castle in 1077 for the troops of the Holy Roman Empire, and more fortifications were built until the 13th century. One room glistens with gold. The prince archbishop’s bedroom has a toilet with a panoramic view of the town below, where the hoi polloi toiled daily for too little.

The fortress is ringed with cannons with cute names like “little dragon” and “scorpion.” They fired stone balls weighing up to 200 kilos at invaders and rebellious miners unhappy with their treatment by the archbishopric.

The privileged class at the time commissioned artists to do their portraits and musicians to entertain them at their lavish parties. Great works of art emerged from these; Mozart himself was hired at 17 as court musician by the prince archbishop in Salzburg.

Empires were also expanded by the privileged class beyond Europe. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the archduke of Austria, was also Charles I or Carlos Primero of the Spanish Empire, father of Felipe II, after which the Philippines was named.

But the days of privilege eventually came to an end. The European masses demanded a more equitable distribution of wealth, and value for the personal earnings that they remitted to the state. 

Over the next centuries, secular states worked to achieve this, using funds collected from the public for the good of the majority.

In our case, this is a work in progress, with public funds often misused and ending up in the pockets of a few individuals — our own modern day version of the privileged class.