Victor Ponta’s solutions for economic rebound

The new PSD (Social-Democratic Party) leader Victor Ponta believes the introduction of the 16% flat profit tax by the liberal government was one of the worst economic mistakes because it widened the gap between rich and poor.

Ponta says he will advocate dropping the flat tax, announcing his party would also promote progressive taxation for high pensions, as well.

This is the first a time a new PSD leader has ever spoken about his economic vision, which turns out to be much more leftist than what the Social-Democrats and their leader Mircea Geoana were advocating in 2009, which was an electoral a year.

Ponta said the main step to curb unemployment was to keep public sector employees in their jobs instead of firing them en-masse as Premier Emil Boc (Democrat-Liberal Party) wants to do.

Besides keeping the public sector jobs and dropping the flat tax, PSD's leader also talked about progressive taxation of pensions (for instance 70% tax on those above 200 million RON Ponta said), emphasising that making such incomes uniform depending on contributions was "non-sense".