Spanish views from a small town

Taxes are a necessary evil. No one likes to pay. But we all like quality public education, decent roads and highways, unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, subsidies, and public hospitals and clinics where we get a fighting chance to recuperate our health. In a perfect world, those who earn the most should pay the most, even if they don't need some of these services. Because those at the top of the world can sometimes fall to its depths and find themselves in need. One would think that would be an incentive to pay more taxes for more earnings.  But this is anything but a perfect world. The more money some people have, the less they want to pay for services that, in their opinion, only freeloaders demand. So tax havens are created, and money squirreled away that no one but its owner will ever benefit from. The Spanish financially elite have always had a "let them eat cake" attitude toward the rest of the population. And so the Spanish people have been regaled to a par...