personal incomes above the rise forecast by the social plan would be całculated according to each qualification group. Similarly the Yugo-slav average of personal incomes for individual qualification groups would serve as the basis for taxation. The trade unions ought to carry out the categorization according to qualifications and determine the standard dispersions of całculated personal incomes, sińce one of their basie tasks is concern for just distribution.
In connection with what has just been stated the following import-ant fact should be considered. Individuals will work better or worse than their qualification averages. In the enterprise, actual work and not a statistical average should be compensated, and accordingly the disposition to work positions and determination of pay scales remains exclusively in the competence of the workers’ council. Cases are not rare, for example, of directors who are markedly organizationally talented and even with insufficient education achieve significant business successes. Such people will receive directors’ incomes, and formal school preparation cannot play any sort of role in their com-pensation. Precisely because of that the proposed two fiscal measures do not represent taxes on the personal incomes of individuals, but are taxes on the sur plus of the fund of personal incomes of the enterprise. The averages which serve as the basis for taxation realistically reflect work contributions on the average for they are founded on the factu-ally realized incomes in our economy.
One of the difficulties of such an approach emerges from the very great differences in the economic development of individual regions. Personal incomes in Slovenia are significantly higher than in Macedonia, and accordingly would be taxed substantially morę. That would not be resolved by dividing the entire country into a certain number of regions (probably into eight: six republics and two pro-vinces) and determining the tax base in proportion to the costs of liv-ing. If the developed regions still paid greater tax, that tax could be used exclusively for contributing to the Fund for Development of the Underdeveloped Regions.
It would be essential for the Federal Bureau of Statistics to begin with gathering and publishing data on personal incomes by occupation or profession. Merely the publication of such data would exert influence on nequalizing the structure of pay scales in the country.
Finally, the distribution of income represents a permanent problem. Personal incomes not only influence prices, but depend on prices. Price disparities necessarily lead to disparities in personal incomes, which means the negation of the self-managed positions of work col-lectives. Consequently the Federal Price Bureau, as it has been con-ceived up to now, represents a foreign body in our system. And sińce it has been oriented toward price control, and not toward the causes which move prices, it also represents an institution technically mis-takenly estab ished. A Bureau for Prices and Incomes should be creat-ed and transformed from a State organ to a social arbitrator. In that way the Bureau will become an instrument of social agreement. A description of the technical functioning of such social arbitration does not fali in the framework of this article.
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