Politics that bear a strong redistributional component from high to low rents are usually commonly understood as progressive politics. A policy that will generate redistributional flows from below average sectors towards superior sectors is then classified as regressive.
In the analysis of inertial tendencies and the basic features of Spanish economic policy, all that refers to an increase in public expenditure stands out, with the consequential necessity of increasing fiscal collection. These substantial increments in collection have not been enough to balance expenses, so that public sector deficits have been habitual year after year. Those deficits have given rise to the necessity of appealing to national debt for their financing and logically, the interest on that national debt, increased with the course of time, has been greater and greater. The budgeted interest for 1993 ascends to 2,3 billion and constitutes a point of remarkable importance in expense budgets.
On the other hand, the bond subscriptions of the debt have as a fundamental characteristic their absence of risk as well as their high interest rates over the last few years. These characteristics make this form of savings investment attractive, separating resources from the financial flow towards real employment-creating private investment. More and more potential "entrepreneurs" are abandoning risk assumption, passing to augment the growing group of consolidated rentiers whose only social function consists of financing the State.
On the other hand, the important debt subscriptions are carried out by those agents with enough saving capacity. As saving capacity increases with income range, it is not difficult to assume that the high incomes of society are those that fundamentally perceive these interests. It is maybe due to this that Adam Smith, in the beginnings of the Economy as an autonomous science, makes the following comment in his Wealth of the Nations: "The merchant and affluent man make money by lending it to the Government, and instead of their commercial capital diminishing, it increases. As a general rule, they consider it a favour that the Government counts on them among the first subscribers when a new borrowing is launched. From this is born the disposition and indulgence in lending that is observed among the citizens of a State where trade flourishes."
Through interests on the debt, a substantial part of national expenditure goes towards the high incomes of society. The productive sector of the economy (in which we can especially include workers that work for other people) bears the fiscal pressure and important fiscal fraud is located in the high social layers. Therefore it is easy to conclude a certain regressive effect in these interests that harms incomes located in the inferior half of the spectrum of levels of the population's wealth that cannot benefit from them.
Lastly it is important to note, among incomes with saving capacity, the diversification of share ownership. Not all saving is channelled towards a certain type of investment, but rather it is divided between the different alternatives with different degrees of profitability and risk. The possibility of having an immobilized part without risk, and with enough profitability, allows risk taking with more imprudence with the other looking for high remunerations; in short, it allows speculation. The high interests of national debt foment speculation.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Diario 16, Tuesday January 5th 1993