Forbidden topics until they explode in our faces

It is stipulated that there are taboo topics in public debate. As a rule, these are subjects that have already passed the problem stage or have every potential to become a problem in the long term.

The status of a prohibited subject is achieved in a very simple way: it is the left that draws the red lines between the topics that can and should be discussed and for which solutions must be found and the others, those that cannot be addressed under penalty of disqualifying those who bring them to public debate.

This happens, for example, with social security. Anyone who dares to suggest that demographics are unbalancing our system of social security and that we should quickly think about changing it is immediately labeled as wanting to privatize the system in order to hand over the money from pensions to insurance companies and funds that gamble it away in the casino – the casino is the same capital market where the State has the money from our pensions.

The same thing happens with strike rules. Any suggestion to review the laws to prevent abuses or to reinforce the obligation of minimum services is immediately classified as democratically dubious because, as we can see, what they want is to end the right to strike.

Social security will be a concern for us in the coming decades, as the ranks of retirees begin to realize that they are going from being well-off to being poor when they stop receiving a salary and start receiving a pension that will become smaller and smaller.

And regular strikes in basic public services are already taking a toll on us regularly, in an ever-increasing imbalance between the abuse in the exercise of some workers' rights and the rights of users and taxpayers.

Unlike other taboo subjects, these have not yet matured enough to stop being taboo.

The taboo on balancing public accounts fell into disuse a few years ago. For a long time, the defense of a zero deficit in the State's accounts remained a forbidden subject. Those who defended that the State should have zero or slightly surplus budget balances were called dangerous neoliberals with a stone in place of a heart, to the point of wanting to end the Social State and close public schools and health services.

We know how this story ended. Public finances collapsed, we had to accept a very tough program with outstretched hands and many of those who used the old-fashioned way became, overnight, champions of the right accounts achieved through permanent appropriations and drastic cuts in public investment.

The latest taboo to fall is immigration. Over the last few years, a red line has been drawn between the disorganisation of the State and the almost non-existence of rules and the need for a controlled, humanitarian and inclusive immigration policy. The result is clear to see. Not only has the State lost control of the flow of migrants, throwing thousands of immigrants into inhumane situations and legal limbo, but the political exploitation of such disorder has contributed greatly to the political earthquake we are witnessing.

We should learn two or three things from these successive and blatant mistakes.

The first is that problems and imbalances do not disappear just because we pretend they do not exist and try to sweep them under the carpet. Quite the opposite. They get worse and end up blowing up in our faces, making solutions more difficult and painful.

Another is to place the taboo in the right place. The red line cannot be between assuming or not assuming the problems. It may be, eventually, between balanced and fair solutions and others that are unacceptable. But then we will already be discussing solutions.

The last thing we must learn is that when we let problems fester, the country will fester with them. And nothing good will come of it.