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In Greece, Property Is Debt

nytimes.com

21–30 of 302 posts

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#21
post #10
post #3

The system is fucked beyond repair. There is no 'Greek' system or 'English' system - it's all the same, it's all interconnected - so someone in Europe must live the consequences of political decisions in China or the United States or any other country, really. And that's to be expected, because the system was not 'engineered', but hacked together in time - sometimes in response to crises, sometimes influenced by insa…

I think faults in each country have one thing in common - socialism and excessive bureaucracy that comes with it.

Its still extremely dangerous to give birth in the US when compared to Greece, our maternal death rate is 7x higher [1], on par with Iran, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.

[1] - http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=2223

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#23
post #13
post #3

The system is fucked beyond repair. There is no 'Greek' system or 'English' system - it's all the same, it's all interconnected - so someone in Europe must live the consequences of political decisions in China or the United States or any other country, really. And that's to be expected, because the system was not 'engineered', but hacked together in time - sometimes in response to crises, sometimes influenced by insa…

>This is the rare case when refactoring just doesn't cut it, we need a complete rewrite of the whole thing. Does anyone have access to the world government dev environment? I mean the code may need re-writing but we could probably use the same infrastructure.

Well, you've got this amazing compiler that just likes to change things you write, they're known as politicians :P

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#24
If you have no money even to pay the property taxes, what money do you have to even improve the economy with that property? Should we praise that the lands just stay there with no output?

Property taxes have this interesting economic plus side: It stops being profitable to just amass wealth, instead, you have to use it to create wealth in order to keep it.

Also, unlike what people in the comments are trying to make of it, countries high property taxes in EU are in good economic condition, like Luxembourg and the UK where they are respectively 1.5x and 2x what they are in Greece. In fact all the countries with high property taxes from OECD are amongst the top economic performers of OECD.

https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-property.htm

It should be clear just from that, that there is absolutely no correlation between high property taxes and a bad economy.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#25
post #3

The system is fucked beyond repair. There is no 'Greek' system or 'English' system - it's all the same, it's all interconnected - so someone in Europe must live the consequences of political decisions in China or the United States or any other country, really. And that's to be expected, because the system was not 'engineered', but hacked together in time - sometimes in response to crises, sometimes influenced by insa…

The other problem is that the Economists who try to control it and debug it are terrible at understanding it. Every countries economy is subtly different, but they have a one size fits nobody, and doesn´t even have the right number of sleeves approach to it.

For example, Greece.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/money-supply-m3

Expand it out to the max - this is an old style, US Great Depression monetary collapse. Their money supply has dropped by about a third since 2009. Some of that is loan write-offs, a lot of it is money being withdrawn from the country, either by rich people who want their money in safer banks, or as debt repayments to european banks. Cost of being in the Euro, very hard to stop this.

Knowing that the money supply has dropped by 1/3, we also know that the lending supply has dropped by 1/3, loans create money etc. Knowing that credit influences prices, we know that property prices are dropping through the floor. Knowing all that, we also know that tax revenue has dropped, because there´s less money circulating to be taxed. (Well, it´s a bit more complex than that but not much.)

The big issue in this kind of monetary collapse is very simple. In a market based economy, most prices can adjust to changes in the money supply and production over time. The one exception is debt, which keeps its coupon value until people default.

Revalue Greece debt though, and there goes a whole bunch of European banks with greek debt on their books, and a GFC style cascade failure to who knows where in the system.

It probably could still all be sorted out if we put some decent computer scientists on the case, but I certainly don´t expect the economists to get there in time.

So I guess Greece will just have to invade Germany.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. What about this article makes you think the Greeks can't make decisions for themselves? Is their land unsuitable for farming, and manufacture, and services? Did someone setup an embargo against them? Furthermore, the idea of needing to overhaul things at a global level makes many assumptions. For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it s…

Decisions for themselves? Hah. It's not in the article, but Schäuble and the other EU finance ministers have set out to make an example out of Greece, or the apparatchiks just don't like the radical lefties that got into power. Paul Krugman has mused, before, EUcrats could tell government officials what to do, and when they follow them, even if the country fails and they get voted out, they'd get cushy EU jobs. But t…

Just so I'm clear, you are claiming that the finance ministers are purposely rigging things so that Greece will fail -- that all those loans and such were part of a plan to make an example out of them.

First I've heard of this, but I haven't been following it. It sounds quite far-fetched though. I must be missing something.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#27

The article mentions the word "tax" 14 times, but it never says what it actually is. How bad is it?

The tax would amount to about a month (or two) of rent, if the property was rented.

The problem is with properties that are not rented long term.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#28
post #10
post #3

The system is fucked beyond repair. There is no 'Greek' system or 'English' system - it's all the same, it's all interconnected - so someone in Europe must live the consequences of political decisions in China or the United States or any other country, really. And that's to be expected, because the system was not 'engineered', but hacked together in time - sometimes in response to crises, sometimes influenced by insa…

I think faults in each country have one thing in common - socialism and excessive bureaucracy that comes with it.

[deleted]

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. What about this article makes you think the Greeks can't make decisions for themselves? Is their land unsuitable for farming, and manufacture, and services? Did someone setup an embargo against them? Furthermore, the idea of needing to overhaul things at a global level makes many assumptions. For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it s…

Decisions for themselves? Hah. It's not in the article, but Schäuble and the other EU finance ministers have set out to make an example out of Greece, or the apparatchiks just don't like the radical lefties that got into power. Paul Krugman has mused, before, EUcrats could tell government officials what to do, and when they follow them, even if the country fails and they get voted out, they'd get cushy EU jobs. But t…

> But the current Greek government don't want cushy EU jobs, they want to save the population.

The current Greek government doesn't seem to want anything other than line their pockets. They've gone back on every single big promise they made before getting elected, and are spreading lies and propaganda to try and keep their positions, even while being wildly unpopular.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#30
post #3

The system is fucked beyond repair. There is no 'Greek' system or 'English' system - it's all the same, it's all interconnected - so someone in Europe must live the consequences of political decisions in China or the United States or any other country, really. And that's to be expected, because the system was not 'engineered', but hacked together in time - sometimes in response to crises, sometimes influenced by insa…

I don't understand this comment. What about this article makes you think the Greeks can't make decisions for themselves? Is their land unsuitable for farming, and manufacture, and services? Did someone setup an embargo against them? Furthermore, the idea of needing to overhaul things at a global level makes many assumptions. For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it s…

Where have you been for the whole decade

There is no self determination possible for Greece

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