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In Greece, Property Is Debt

nytimes.com

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Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#81

Post by soVeryTired »

elcct wrote: post #10
delegate wrote: 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.

Socialism is a spectrum. Are you talking about full-on soviet communism? The Scandinavian model? Venezuela? The national health service in the UK?

I'm don't really think that socialism == bureaucracy == failure is a cogent argument.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#82

Post by flexie »

cgio wrote: post #80
flexie wrote: post #74

Let's get facts straight: The state property tax in Greece is 0% for property up to €200K. Then 0.2 to 1% from €200K to €5M. Then 2% above €2M. Property taxes are hardly killing the Greek economy and especially not for the poor or the middle class. On the contrary, Greeks are paying very little. The problem is that Greeks used to have much more property than for example Northern Europeans. For comparison, in Denmark…

Let's get facts straight. The state property tax in Greece is calculated on a nominal value far removed from market value. This means that a 300K nominal value property cannot sell today for 150K (I know, I have tried.) In practice, as the article mentions property value approaches zero as the market is incredibly shallow. Recalculate on the basis of that and then make the comparison.

I didn't pretend to describe all the rules in detail. In Denmark, property taxes are also calculated based on values that are not the current market value. Currently, 95% of Danes pay the state property tax based on a 2001/2002 value assessed by the tax authorities.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#83

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

flexie wrote: post #74

Let's get facts straight: The state property tax in Greece is 0% for property up to €200K. Then 0.2 to 1% from €200K to €5M. Then 2% above €2M. Property taxes are hardly killing the Greek economy and especially not for the poor or the middle class. On the contrary, Greeks are paying very little. The problem is that Greeks used to have much more property than for example Northern Europeans. For comparison, in Denmark…

Most of Europe at this point has no or almost no property tax.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#84

Post by Shivetya »

onion2k wrote: post #20
nerdponx wrote: post #11

Why have taxes been rising? To pay off all that debt?

Austerity (deep cuts to government services) and tax rises were the conditions imposed on Greece as part of a series of financial bailouts from various national banks around the EU. The Greek people had riots over them, and a change of government in September 2015, before there was a consensus that there was absolutely no other option but to go along with the steps required in order to get the bailout money.

Yet Greece is still overspending in regards to propping up its social security compared to other EU nations. Courts have regularly blocked reform attempts.

So now they have both high unemployment and high taxes, the latter discourages if not out right prevents new businesses from starting. You cannot recover any economy by taxing your way out of your malaise

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#85

Post by webscaleizfun »

ferongr wrote: post #52
webscaleizfun wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What area are you in? Compared to Seattle/Portland/San Diego prices, 40k euros seems cheap for a 1963 670sqft apt. A similar house in Tacoma would run 110k euros right now, and it is a terrible location.

It's in Kallithea, a generic south-European concrete-jungle urban center. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to compare property values between the US and Greece. The average person working on the private sector would be lucky if he made $10000/year at this point in time.

Perhaps property value is in line then if 40k euros is an inflated price, I think 110k euros in Tacoma is a price too high for that area myself, the average income down there is around 22k euros a year for a working person [1].

[1] - http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/washington/tacoma

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#86

Post by delegate »

DickingAround wrote: post #9
delegate wrote: 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…

Just like everyone else, Greeks want to buy Samsung and Apple and Sony and VW and Facebook ads and materials and services from all over the world.

It's the way our system works - I want avocados now, even though I'm thousands km away from an avocado tree. One solution would be for me to give up on the avocado, but then the world needs me to buy it, otherwise the balance of avocados in the economy will move and the futures will go down and everyone panics and now maybe I will say no to mangos too ... sell, sell, sell!

This is how it works - not because someone conceptualised, thought through the whole complexity - it just ended up being like this..

> For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it should function.

I'm not getting my hopes too high for a global change - in fact I think this can't happen without some sort of global crisis or conflict preceding it.

It's very easy to see that the system is broken - much harder to fix it of course.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#87

Post by thght »

This is not only about Greece, a house is a basic necessity of live, wether you can find a job or not. Governments should cap the price per square meter so a house will always be available for everyone.

As it is now you cannot really buy a house, you need a mortgage for live and work your entire life to pay interest. If this continues every house in the entire world will become unending debt and ever more unattainable, except for the rich of course.

This is also why basic income could never work in practice, as the house prices keep increasing you'd also need to increase the basic income. And where goes the money? Indeed, to the rich property owners..

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#89

Post by cgio »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #75
SamUK96 wrote: post #34

This is what happens when you allow uncontrolled and unregulated asset transfers. There's a reason that pretty much any index/stock in the world freezes when the daily drop exceeds a certain threshold (i.e. Japan, JPX, has a limit of usually ~7% [1]). This prevents panic selling and even though seems like a "delaying-the-inevitable-drop" cop-out, it really does work. Greece Government are stupid as hell for letting e…

You cannot reasonably charge high property taxes and then stop people from sell property they do not want.

By imposing high property taxes you make selling harder.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#90

Post by mfukar »

Shivetya wrote: post #84
onion2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austerity (deep cuts to government services) and tax rises were the conditions imposed on Greece as part of a series of financial bailouts from various national banks around the EU. The Greek people had riots over them, and a change of government in September 2015, before there was a consensus that there was absolutely no other option but to go along with the steps required in order to get the bailout money.

Yet Greece is still overspending in regards to propping up its social security compared to other EU nations. Courts have regularly blocked reform attempts. So now they have both high unemployment and high taxes, the latter discourages if not out right prevents new businesses from starting. You cannot recover any economy by taxing your way out of your malaise

> Courts have regularly blocked reform attempts.

That is quite simply a lie. Recent GR governments have not pushed for pension or social security reform, only cuts in spending, all of which the Parliament approved and set into effect _immediately_. As far as I know they're all still in effect.

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