How much did hosting the Olympics in 2004 contribute to Greece's problems? I remember hearing they were having financial trouble getting things together even back then.
Huge cost, retarded overspending etc, but just another drop in the sea.
I'm not sure how your question relates to my quote. My best reply is "The EU will ground Greece into the corner for a week". Hope that helps.
It is the nature of the potential grounding that I am unclear about.
Are we talking about something with measurable consequences (restricted member-rights, exclusion from X), or just general grumpiness and strongly worded letters?
I suspect the real answer is "we want to create a transfer union without explicitly saying so".
You've lost me. It is a de facto transfer union right now.
Create a credit line. Never have it paid back.
Presently the fiction is that Greece is only borrowing funds from the stabilization fund - that the fund is acting as a lender of last resort rather than a permanent transfer from richer parts of the Eurozone.
I'm not sure how your question relates to my quote. My best reply is "The EU will ground Greece into the corner for a week". Hope that helps.
It is the nature of the potential grounding that I am unclear about.
Are we talking about something with measurable consequences (restricted member-rights, exclusion from X), or just general grumpiness and strongly worded letters?
The political situation will not be complicated because of what happens to Greece, but because there will be clashes within the member states on what should happen to the Union itself, to the newest members' ambitions about joining the Eurozone, to the political necessity to expand on the Balkans and to the whole idea of a common currency for a territory having economic disparity at this level(yes, there are conditions a member has to satisfy to join the Euro, but they are not nearly well thought out). Just one country leaving the Euro would set a terrible, terrible precedent.
I suspect the real answer is "we want to create a transfer union without explicitly saying so".
You've lost me. It is a de facto transfer union right now.
Create a credit line. Never have it paid back.
Presently the fiction is that Greece is only borrowing funds from the stabilization fund - that the fund is acting as a lender of last resort rather than a permanent transfer from richer parts of the Eurozone.
Naah, that's a weak fiction. Voters realizing that the money goes more or less directly to paying already accumulated debt and that the country has been irresponsible for decades is the tricky part.
No political juggling is going to be able to sell that.
I believe there is no formal, codified process for a member state to withdraw or be expelled from the EU.
Anyone know if that is accurate?
There is a mechanism to withdraw from the EU but not the Eurozone.
There is also no formal mechanism for ejecting a member state although Germany was previously talking about suspending the voting rights of trouble making countries.
In any case, what you have to ask now is what Europe is waiting for. Why will six months more of credit lines and suffering make the situation any better?
Because it gives a shot of trying to deal(it will fail, most likely) with the political situation within the EU which will be complicated and sensitive enough to deserve any additional time it may get. When Greece defaults you'll see a temporary surge in jingoism pretty much all across Europe.
I'm unclear what the EU is bound to do for (or not do to) its member states; Is ejecting Greece, as a result of that turmoil, a viable strategy to mitigate the financial impact of their default?
I can't think of anything else EU grumbling could really do; as I am under the impression that it is a relatively toothless organization.
[e] Disclaimer:
Everything I know about the EU
Basically an international friars club, led by Roast Master Nigel Farrage, where the representatives of member states make sick burns on each other all day.
The EU isn't bound to do anything.
In fact, bailouts of EU member states is explicitly forbidden in the Maastricht Treaty.
The EU isn't toothless, it's just horrendously indecisive. We're into uncharted waters here, more and more electorates are beginning to turn to fringe political parties because of their dissatisfaction with (among other things) the EU and the establishment in general.
The greek people seem to refuse to take any responsibility for the current state of their economy. With tax evasion seeming to be the national pastime what do they expect?
Vanity Fair ran a piece with some nice info about the fundamental failures of Greece.
The tax collection stuff and inability to produce accurate numbers gives the whole thing a third world aura.
What an amazing article. A fantastic read.
Anyone see the Big Picture? It looks like Greece is gone to hell in a hand basket. I hate to say it, but nuking it from orbit (economically) sounds like the only real option.
The problem is so damn systemic, because even if you raise taxes, raise the retirement age, and cut your public sector workforce, who is still going to pay taxes, or deal with corruption? Hell, to us, it's plain out corruption, to them, it's simply the way things are done. If it were possible, I'd wipe the board clean, and start over. I don't think that can happen, and even if it could, a lot of skulls will get cracked open before it does.
The Euro is headed for rough times either way. Either they pay off Greece and Portugal and Ireland and get devalued briefly and set a bad example or they play hard ball and kill off the currency when bits and pieces break off and the world market goes nuts.
Just one country leaving the Euro would set a terrible, terrible precedent.
Agreed. 'When times are tough, drop the dead weight' is not a very progressive notion.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited June 2011
Yeah, that Vanity Fair piece is great. Michael Lewis is always an entertaining read. And if even half of what he describes is true, then maybe selling the country off as parts is the best solution. I mean, fuck, how badly did the EU drop the ball on even letting them in in the first place? Talk about dropping the ball, due diligence wise.
It really looks like Britain/Turkey dodged a bullet not switching/not being allowed into the Euro now. I wonder if this is going to longterm kill any EU expansion.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited June 2011
I wonder what the protesters are particularly protesting.
Clearly money has to come in from somewhere. Maybe you can't retire at 50. Etcetera.
I wonder what the protesters are particularly protesting.
Clearly money has to come in from somewhere. Maybe you can't retire at 50. Etcetera.
Are there any interviews with the protesters? I want to know what their politics are and why they think rioting is going to influence decisions in their favor. All they're accomplishing is securing overtime pay for hundreds of cops.
The greek people seem to refuse to take any responsibility for the current state of their economy. With tax evasion seeming to be the national pastime what do they expect?
The German banking system should probably take some responsibility for writing a ton of shitty loans to the Greeks.
I wonder what the protesters are particularly protesting.
Clearly money has to come in from somewhere. Maybe you can't retire at 50. Etcetera.
Are there any interviews with the protesters? I want to know what their politics are and why they think rioting is going to influence decisions in their favor. All they're accomplishing is securing overtime pay for hundreds of cops.
Rioting is a national passtime in Greece.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited June 2011
I read one lengthy interview with a protester, about 55 year old bloke. But they only brought up how shitty his situation was. And his opinion that a bailout was horrible and pushing the retirement age was horrible. Most propositions seemed horrible.
Basically a "no" to everything seemed to be this guys' politics.
I wonder what the protesters are particularly protesting.
Clearly money has to come in from somewhere. Maybe you can't retire at 50. Etcetera.
Are there any interviews with the protesters? I want to know what their politics are and why they think rioting is going to influence decisions in their favor. All they're accomplishing is securing overtime pay for hundreds of cops.
Rioting is a national passtime in Greece.
?
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited June 2011
My gut reaction when just hearing the bullet points of this crisis was a feeling of
LAZY
And I've heard much more about it in the past week but my gut reaction still feels pretty accurate.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited June 2011
The notice about how 15,700 swimming pools out of 16,000 in a rich suburb were unlawful/undeclared/un-taxed also gave me a strong feeling of
The notice about how 15,700 swimming pools out of 16,000 in a rich suburb were unlawful/undeclared/un-taxed also gave me a strong feeling of
TAX EVASION IS OKAY WHEN EVERYONE DOES IT
It's not just ok, it's basically required by the system.
Wanna get some construction done on your house? You are gonna need to pay under the table. Try and do it legit and the company will just jack up it's rates so you have to pay all the extra fees and taxes inherent in doing it legitimately plus an extra charge they tack on just for making them do it legit.
They make it a pain in the ass for you not to evade taxes.
Greece still suffers from the after-effects of history. The millitary coup in 1969, really did a number on goverment credibility and legitimacy(coup have a tendency to do that).
Nobody wanted to pay taxes to a oppressive and corrupt state, because they feel its not a legitimat representative of their interests. The Goverment in turn tried buy that legitimacy using welfare payments.
Its no accident that 3 of the 5 PIIGS(Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) states used to be millitary dictatorships.(and Italy is a byword for corrupt goverment).
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
The notice about how 15,700 swimming pools out of 16,000 in a rich suburb were unlawful/undeclared/un-taxed also gave me a strong feeling of
TAX EVASION IS OKAY WHEN EVERYONE DOES IT
It's not just ok, it's basically required by the system.
Wanna get some construction done on your house? You are gonna need to pay under the table. Try and do it legit and the company will just jack up it's rates so you have to pay all the extra fees and taxes inherent in doing it legitimately plus an extra charge they tack on just for making them do it legit.
They make it a pain in the ass for you not to evade taxes.
Lol, how is this an excuse? Yes, doing it legally costs more. "Because it's cheaper" is not a viable reason to steal. If you can't afford it legitimately then don't get it.
Being ok with bribes, fraud and various forms of theft is not a "culture", it's a failure of enforcement. If people actually got caught and fined/imprisoned for this, it would stop. Atm there's zero risk and high reward, so people do it.
Ok but aggregate revenue wise? Letting 1 Mr Politician go and catching 20,000 Mr Random Joes is a really effective strategy.
Even in the US there are scandals every once in a while about politicians with illegal homes or abusing various loopholes, shockingly people in power abuse it sometimes!
That doesn't mean you throw your hands in the hair and say "well fuck it". This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
Honestly the tax revenue thing isn't even that big a deal compared to all this other bullshit anyway, their country is loaded with socialism and government employees, it's like Ayn Rand's nightmare or something.
The Groningen Growth & Development Centre has published a poll revealing that between 1995 and 2005, Greece was the country whose workers worked the most hours/year among European nations; Greeks worked an average of 1,900 hours per year, followed by Spaniards (average of 1,800 hours/year).
This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
You don't really get what a culture is do you?
Your atitude for instance is the result of a very law and order oriented culture.
Edit: or to respond more coherently: Culture decides what is a crime, how crime is tackled and how its punished. Different cultures have different definitions of what constitutes a crime.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
The notice about how 15,700 swimming pools out of 16,000 in a rich suburb were unlawful/undeclared/un-taxed also gave me a strong feeling of
TAX EVASION IS OKAY WHEN EVERYONE DOES IT
It's not just ok, it's basically required by the system.
Wanna get some construction done on your house? You are gonna need to pay under the table. Try and do it legit and the company will just jack up it's rates so you have to pay all the extra fees and taxes inherent in doing it legitimately plus an extra charge they tack on just for making them do it legit.
They make it a pain in the ass for you not to evade taxes.
Lol, how is this an excuse? Yes, doing it legally costs more. "Because it's cheaper" is not a viable reason to steal. If you can't afford it legitimately then don't get it.
Being ok with bribes, fraud and various forms of theft is not a "culture", it's a failure of enforcement. If people actually got caught and fined/imprisoned for this, it would stop. Atm there's zero risk and high reward, so people do it.
Why though? Seriously, ask yourself why you would pay taxes if you could get away with tax fraud? Why would expect people on an individual level to actively work against their own self-interest?
Because that's basically the issue here. Doing business above the table is actively discouraged and since there's little to no enforcement, there's no incentive to do business above the table. What sense (business or otherwise) does it make to pay like 10% extra (number pulled out of ass) on your home renovation project when you don't have to?
And that's even assuming they'll quote you a (ridiculously inflated) price for above the table transactions. Many apparently just won't, or so the couple of greeks I know tell me. It's not worth the hassle to them.
This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
You don't really get what a culture is do you?
Your atitude for instance is the result of a very law and order oriented culture.
Edit: or to respond more coherently: Culture decides what is a crime, how crime is tackled and how its punished. Different cultures have different definitions of what constitutes a crime.
Not really. When Abdul Hamid II declared talking politics to be a crime, it became a crime. There were more than enough disappearances to prove that.
This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
You don't really get what a culture is do you?
Your atitude for instance is the result of a very law and order oriented culture.
Edit: or to respond more coherently: Culture decides what is a crime, how crime is tackled and how its punished. Different cultures have different definitions of what constitutes a crime.
Not really. When Abdul Hamid II declared talking politics to be a crime, it became a crime. There were more than enough disappearances to prove that.
Not the same thing. One is the creation of laws, customs and atitudes through group consensus. The other is a insane dictator trying to enact his will on an opressed populace.
I bet if you ask the people of the Ottoman empire(without them taking you for police officer), they would disagree with Abdul Hamid II's definition of a crime.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
You don't really get what a culture is do you?
Your atitude for instance is the result of a very law and order oriented culture.
Edit: or to respond more coherently: Culture decides what is a crime, how crime is tackled and how its punished. Different cultures have different definitions of what constitutes a crime.
Not really. When Abdul Hamid II declared talking politics to be a crime, it became a crime. There were more than enough disappearances to prove that.
Not the same thing. One is the creation of laws, customs and atitudes through group consensus. The other is a insane dictator trying to enact his will on an opressed populace.
I bet if you ask the people of the Ottoman empire(without them taking you for police officer), they would disagree with Abdul Hamid II's definition of a crime.
Fugitive slave act?
I really think you need to learn the difference between "crime" and "taboo."
So after reading the Vanity Fair article it really seems to me that Greece is really, really fucked. Like they need to redo their entire culture fucked. I don't think thats going to happen anytime soon though but I have a lot of sympathy for the Germans and French who just want to cut them loose. Unlike in most countries the problem really doesn't seem to be a small number of bankers and fraudsters, but with the average joe on the street.
Guy Rundle from crikey.com.au did a really good write up about the nature of the Greece, EU and there IMF crisis, which seems to more or less agree with what you guys are saying, it's as much a political crises related to the nature of the EU in general more then a purely economical one.
Rundle: shepherds, portents and Europe face-to-face in Athens
Guy Rundle writes:
ANGELA MERKEL, EUROZONE ECONOMY, GEORGE PAPANDREOU, GERMANY ECONOMY, GREECE ECONOMY, GUY RUNDLE
Weeks after it began, the world's press has started to pay attention to the real story in Greece -- not the wrangling in Luxembourg over the terms of a second bailout for the cash-starved nation, but the continued refusal of the people of Greece to accept the conditions going with it.
For close to a month now, Syntagma Square at the centre of Athens, in the front of the Greek Parliament, has been occupied by an insistent crowd, who have been dubbed the "aganaktismenoi" (outraged) , a term similar to that applied to the "indignados" in Spain and Portugal.
Originating from one of the mass protests organised by the powerful Greek Communist party (KKE), and its trade union formation, the "Indignant Ones" has become an autonomous event -- a multitude of people acquiring an identity beyond party or narrow formation, and positively asserting their existence separate to the state, or the client parties dependent on it.
This is the real story of the Greek, and European, financial crisis, because it is clearly the process that is driving the crisis -- the insistent refusal of the Greek people to liquidate their social life and their shared assets to serve the global financial markets.
Though the crisis is being presented as an economic one -- with breathless financial commentators following every move of the bond markets, as if it were somehow a living being -- it is nothing of the sort. It is political through and through.
Had the Greeks accepted the sort of deal the Irish accepted -- where the government buys the private sector's bad assets, i.e. the banks, through nationalisation, and sells off the public sector's good assets through privatisation -- there would be no Greek financial crisis.
The ruling PASOK party would have had the political clout to bring in an austere budget, its credit rating would not have dropped to CCC, the bond markets would have eased up a little, and the huge costs of maintaining its debt would have lowered.
That would have offered neither genuine economic improvement -- it would simply have plunged the country into an austerity-driven recession deeper than that which it is currently experiencing -- nor liberation; the opposite in fact. The country would have been laced into the logic of financial capital for good, its politics traded upwards to the empyrean realm of EU and IMF administrators by common consent.
But that was never likely to happen, for Greece is -- as the KKE and PM Papandreou noted -- the "weak link" in the EU project, and, indeed, thereby in the world financial system. The KKE said it about Greece in the way Lenin said it about Russia -- the contradictions were at their utmost there.
Papandreou stripped the sentiment of its assertive political rhetoric, and conveyed it to the apprehensive leaders of the EU as a scare-story: if you don't bail me out, I won't be able to control my crazy people. The son of a former Prime Minister, he had grown up in exile; he found it easy to represent himself to the EU as a governor of a wayward province, rather than as the head of an independent state.
There was more than a touch of orientalism in his pitch, scaring starchy Germans with wild thoughts of mad Greeks.
Yet the problem for Papandreou and the EU is that the Greeks failed to live up to the stereotype. They were neither passive like the Irish, nor aleatoric and ad hoc (but effective) like the Icelandics. Submission had been averted and crisis brought on because their resistance has been disciplined and relentless.
The anarchist black bloc and the kokoulofori (hooded ones -- the unorganised alienated youth who turn up for mayhem at large protests) may grab the headlines, but they have been the "left" margin of what have always been much larger and non-violent, though assertive, protests. Week after week they've come out, relentless.
Now such resilience is starting to pay off. Eighteen months ago, most Greeks were convinced by Papandreou to follow an austerity lead. The centre-Right New Democracy party had been in power for a decade, having come in on a promise to sweep away the corruption and clientelism of the earlier PASOK era.
But it had merely entrenched it, with different clients, and its failure had given PASOK -- Papandreou's new modernised version -- a rare, single-party victory in the elections, taking 156 seats of 300. Since then he has spent all his political capital trying to solve the problems of finance capital, and people are starting to see what the austerity programs look like.
For Papandreou, the financial crisis has become a very political crisis -- losing him the confidence of the old nationalist part of PASOK, and forcing him to seek support from other parties, and, most recently, a unity government with the New Democrats -- which might prompt a wholesale realignment of Greek politics
Furthermore the Left's slogan -- "we won't pay for their crisis" -- has started to take hold. Narratives of fecklessness and a degree of guilt about failure to reform, appear to have been superseded by an understanding that the financial crisis is an auto-generated one.
It is not deficit spending, per se, that has pushed Greece towards bankruptcy, but the price of borrowing, escalated steadily by talk of Greece's possible bankruptcy. Now most people understand that they are being asked to sell off real assets and cut down real lives, to service imaginary entities.
Europe-wide, the Greek crisis is laying bare the nature of the EU: that it is not an expression of collective development, but an anti-democratic entity, serving financial markets through an inflexible currency, and creating a monopoly on sources of development capital.
Now that the final part of the first bailout has been agreed to pay through, and a second one guaranteed, the crisis may ease off a little (though not for Angela Merkel and the German Christian Democrats -- acceding to the second bailout will finish them politically).
But it will return, since the terms of the second bailout demand yet more austerity from a country that has already shown its unwillingness to cop to existing impositions -- and the amazing announcement from the markets that the country's credit rating won't lift, even if the total austerity package is implemented! Snide remarks by Germans that the country should sell off a few of its islands, and serious suggestions of privatising everything up to and including the Parthenon, will only double the resolve.
You would think, when people talk about privatising the Parthenon, that the nihilistic nature of capitalism would become visible to all. Apparently not. Last year, this publication was almost alone in noting the importance of the crisis, your correspondent observing:
"It is also possible that Papandreou’s remark about Greece as the “weak link” is more telling than he knows -- that the last place in Europe with a living militant, solidarity tradition, when intersecting with a technocratic post-politics, may produce something else entirely. Looking at the bright streets surrounding Syntagma, with its global chain stores -- Costa coffee, H & M, Marks and frikkin Spencers -- you can see why so many people are keen to stay with the smooth euro-vision of the central parties. But those streets lead into other streets, where there is less in the windows, and loose tiles beneath the feet, and the red flags are still flying there."
That has clearly come to pass. The EU, the euro, and through the euro, the world financial system, is having its future fought out in Syntagma square. Still, the financial journalists have not got it.
Like the shepherds outside the ancient city, watching the stars for portents, the financerati watch the changing figures on the screens to divine the future. Inside the city walls, people look to the Acropolis to remind themselves to stand for something more, and to fight for what cannot be traded away. 'tain't no coincidence, as we say, that Europe comes face to face with itself in Athens once more.
Though the crisis is being presented as an economic one -- with breathless financial commentators following every move of the bond markets, as if it were somehow a living being -- it is nothing of the sort. It is political through and through.
Had the Greeks accepted the sort of deal the Irish accepted -- where the government buys the private sector's bad assets, i.e. the banks, through nationalisation, and sells off the public sector's good assets through privatisation -- there would be no Greek financial crisis.
Frankly, I don't find myself all torn up the Greeks don't feel like socializing the loses of the idiot private sector and then taking austerity straight in the ass for the privilege.
Though the crisis is being presented as an economic one -- with breathless financial commentators following every move of the bond markets, as if it were somehow a living being -- it is nothing of the sort. It is political through and through.
Had the Greeks accepted the sort of deal the Irish accepted -- where the government buys the private sector's bad assets, i.e. the banks, through nationalisation, and sells off the public sector's good assets through privatisation -- there would be no Greek financial crisis.
Frankly, I don't find myself all torn up the Greeks don't feel like socializing the loses of the idiot private sector and then taking austerity straight in the ass for the privilege.
That quote is bullshit. Ireland and Greece are vastly different beasts. The Irish economy was doing fine pre-GFC; the government was running a surplus and had tiny total debt, their problem was a housing bubble, similar to the US. I can't help but think that if Ireland had gone with stimulus instead of austerity and restructured their bank debts when they nationalised them, they would now be in a far better position. I mean for all the US's faults in dealing with the crisis, the US has just over half of Irelands unemployment and the economy is stuttering, not in free fall like Ireland.
edit: Also it's not just the idiot private sector, the government spent decades telling people that they could have a functioning economy, lifetime jobs and middle aged pensions, while cooking the books for evidence that they could. The fault for this crisis does not lie at the feet of a retired 51 year old hairdresser.
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Anyone know if that is accurate?
Huge cost, retarded overspending etc, but just another drop in the sea.
You are wrong.
However, there is no procedure for leaving the Eurozone.
Server busy message makes it impossible for me to discuss, but I'll be back later when it's hopefully fixed.
It is the nature of the potential grounding that I am unclear about.
Are we talking about something with measurable consequences (restricted member-rights, exclusion from X), or just general grumpiness and strongly worded letters?
Create a credit line. Never have it paid back.
Presently the fiction is that Greece is only borrowing funds from the stabilization fund - that the fund is acting as a lender of last resort rather than a permanent transfer from richer parts of the Eurozone.
The political situation will not be complicated because of what happens to Greece, but because there will be clashes within the member states on what should happen to the Union itself, to the newest members' ambitions about joining the Eurozone, to the political necessity to expand on the Balkans and to the whole idea of a common currency for a territory having economic disparity at this level(yes, there are conditions a member has to satisfy to join the Euro, but they are not nearly well thought out). Just one country leaving the Euro would set a terrible, terrible precedent.
Naah, that's a weak fiction. Voters realizing that the money goes more or less directly to paying already accumulated debt and that the country has been irresponsible for decades is the tricky part.
No political juggling is going to be able to sell that.
There is a mechanism to withdraw from the EU but not the Eurozone.
There is also no formal mechanism for ejecting a member state although Germany was previously talking about suspending the voting rights of trouble making countries.
The EU isn't bound to do anything.
In fact, bailouts of EU member states is explicitly forbidden in the Maastricht Treaty.
The EU isn't toothless, it's just horrendously indecisive. We're into uncharted waters here, more and more electorates are beginning to turn to fringe political parties because of their dissatisfaction with (among other things) the EU and the establishment in general.
What an amazing article. A fantastic read.
Anyone see the Big Picture? It looks like Greece is gone to hell in a hand basket. I hate to say it, but nuking it from orbit (economically) sounds like the only real option.
The problem is so damn systemic, because even if you raise taxes, raise the retirement age, and cut your public sector workforce, who is still going to pay taxes, or deal with corruption? Hell, to us, it's plain out corruption, to them, it's simply the way things are done. If it were possible, I'd wipe the board clean, and start over. I don't think that can happen, and even if it could, a lot of skulls will get cracked open before it does.
Agreed. 'When times are tough, drop the dead weight' is not a very progressive notion.
Clearly money has to come in from somewhere. Maybe you can't retire at 50. Etcetera.
Are there any interviews with the protesters? I want to know what their politics are and why they think rioting is going to influence decisions in their favor. All they're accomplishing is securing overtime pay for hundreds of cops.
The German banking system should probably take some responsibility for writing a ton of shitty loans to the Greeks.
Rioting is a national passtime in Greece.
Basically a "no" to everything seemed to be this guys' politics.
?
LAZY
And I've heard much more about it in the past week but my gut reaction still feels pretty accurate.
TAX EVASION IS OKAY WHEN EVERYONE DOES IT
It's not just ok, it's basically required by the system.
Wanna get some construction done on your house? You are gonna need to pay under the table. Try and do it legit and the company will just jack up it's rates so you have to pay all the extra fees and taxes inherent in doing it legitimately plus an extra charge they tack on just for making them do it legit.
They make it a pain in the ass for you not to evade taxes.
Nobody wanted to pay taxes to a oppressive and corrupt state, because they feel its not a legitimat representative of their interests. The Goverment in turn tried buy that legitimacy using welfare payments.
Its no accident that 3 of the 5 PIIGS(Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) states used to be millitary dictatorships.(and Italy is a byword for corrupt goverment).
Lol, how is this an excuse? Yes, doing it legally costs more. "Because it's cheaper" is not a viable reason to steal. If you can't afford it legitimately then don't get it.
Being ok with bribes, fraud and various forms of theft is not a "culture", it's a failure of enforcement. If people actually got caught and fined/imprisoned for this, it would stop. Atm there's zero risk and high reward, so people do it.
Arresting Mr Random Joe while Mr Politican is doing backstroaks in his equaly illegal swimingpool, is not going to go over well.
Like shryke pointed out, its a culture. They do exist and prosper to an extent that would surprise many people.
Even in the US there are scandals every once in a while about politicians with illegal homes or abusing various loopholes, shockingly people in power abuse it sometimes!
That doesn't mean you throw your hands in the hair and say "well fuck it". This isn't a cultural problem, if you stop enforcing laws people stop obeying them, the honor system doesn't fucking work. This is true in EVERY country, EVERY society.
Honestly the tax revenue thing isn't even that big a deal compared to all this other bullshit anyway, their country is loaded with socialism and government employees, it's like Ayn Rand's nightmare or something.
You don't really get what a culture is do you?
Your atitude for instance is the result of a very law and order oriented culture.
Edit: or to respond more coherently: Culture decides what is a crime, how crime is tackled and how its punished. Different cultures have different definitions of what constitutes a crime.
Why though? Seriously, ask yourself why you would pay taxes if you could get away with tax fraud? Why would expect people on an individual level to actively work against their own self-interest?
Because that's basically the issue here. Doing business above the table is actively discouraged and since there's little to no enforcement, there's no incentive to do business above the table. What sense (business or otherwise) does it make to pay like 10% extra (number pulled out of ass) on your home renovation project when you don't have to?
And that's even assuming they'll quote you a (ridiculously inflated) price for above the table transactions. Many apparently just won't, or so the couple of greeks I know tell me. It's not worth the hassle to them.
Not really. When Abdul Hamid II declared talking politics to be a crime, it became a crime. There were more than enough disappearances to prove that.
Not the same thing. One is the creation of laws, customs and atitudes through group consensus. The other is a insane dictator trying to enact his will on an opressed populace.
I bet if you ask the people of the Ottoman empire(without them taking you for police officer), they would disagree with Abdul Hamid II's definition of a crime.
Fugitive slave act?
I really think you need to learn the difference between "crime" and "taboo."
Frankly, I don't find myself all torn up the Greeks don't feel like socializing the loses of the idiot private sector and then taking austerity straight in the ass for the privilege.
That quote is bullshit. Ireland and Greece are vastly different beasts. The Irish economy was doing fine pre-GFC; the government was running a surplus and had tiny total debt, their problem was a housing bubble, similar to the US. I can't help but think that if Ireland had gone with stimulus instead of austerity and restructured their bank debts when they nationalised them, they would now be in a far better position. I mean for all the US's faults in dealing with the crisis, the US has just over half of Irelands unemployment and the economy is stuttering, not in free fall like Ireland.
edit: Also it's not just the idiot private sector, the government spent decades telling people that they could have a functioning economy, lifetime jobs and middle aged pensions, while cooking the books for evidence that they could. The fault for this crisis does not lie at the feet of a retired 51 year old hairdresser.