End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#101

Post by TomK32 » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 3:13 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #21

> turned Greece into a different country. They turned themselves into a different country by borrowing Euros at German market interest rates while their previous interest rates for borrowing were at 16% before they joined the Eurozone. They lived way above their means for more than 10 years, what did they expect for a country that has virtually no industry?

common currency without a common borrowing (or even financial) policy is what we should learn from this; and be grateful that we only needed 20 years to learn and hopefully fix that mistake.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#102

Post by cycrutchfield » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 3:48 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #6

cycrutchfield wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 developers are going to buy up all the houses in the village?

just decrease dev's salaries and everything will be fine

yeah ok, i'll get right on that. it's not like salaries are determined by the market for those skills or anything

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#103

Post by cycrutchfield » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #30

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

>There is almost no work -- the main sources of income are beekeeping and a bit of forestry. There's no tourism, even though, according to UNESCO, the air here is cleaner than almost anywhere else in Europe. One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for…

> "One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy. " In rural areas I think you have to start thinking more concretely about what "economy" means. With smaller populations things are much more micro than macro. One huge difference between rur…

How about instead of wasting their time hunting and foraging for food, people should spend their time improving their skill set so they can earn more than $5000 a year? You say self-sufficiency, I say inefficient subsistence hunting/farming.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#104

Post by ben_w » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

shard972 wrote: post #98

ben_w wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. Both Democrat and Republican parties are much too right wing to get elected in the UK. I am aware that it may seem surprising that Obamacare is too right-wing, but compare it to the NHS. Likewise, one of the things which makes no sense to me about American politics are sentences like “liberals want to take away our guns” (sarcastic use of the name?) in response to limited control; in comparison, the UK…

I said this somewhere else but it's a fools errand to take left/right understandings from one country and just apply it to another country. Most people refer to left/right in terms of it being a snapshot between two competing power centers which occur in democracies. You could try going down the path of common narritives or meta-narritives of the left/right but you usually end up conceptually a lot higher than some l…

> They don't want to end up like the UK where you need a license to watch tv, own a knife, stack rocks on the beach or put rubbish in your own van. They look at a city like london where crime has skyrocketed and pensioners are being arrested for defending themselves in their own homes and wonder what on earth is wrong with the brits.

Mainly what’s wrong is a lot of straw men in the news reports. TV licenses are a thing, but the rest of your examples are things I’ve never heard of or which misrepresent reality.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#105

Post by TangoTrotFox » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

shard972 wrote: post #97

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this would depend on what you consider liberalism. For instance, I think two of the most important components of liberalism are the autonomy of the individual and the consent of the governed. If we wanted to create a truly liberal government we might have institutions where you were given the option of paying an education tax. And if you paid this tax, then you would be able to opt in to public education bene…

> I think this would depend on what you consider liberalism. For instance, I think two of the most important components of liberalism are the autonomy of the individual and the consent of the governed. I would say these two aspects definitially are hallmarks of liberalism. Your next steps go down a libertarian or "right" path but if we were to add to our bucket of values some form of egalitarianism, which is quite co…

I can clearly see how one ideology could be seen as operating under a pretense of liberalism, at least given the hallmarks we've mentioned. How do you think the government (or at least the segment of government) I've described would also be considered to be operating under pretense?

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#106

Post by barrow-rider » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #83

> "In the past decades, the governments have so overwhelmingly failed that Greeks blame everything that goes wrong on the state," This hypocrisy makes me angry. Those governments were not forced on poor Greek people by bad Jews or lizards from the space. Greek voters had a choice and they repeatedly refused a wide range of responsible trustworthy politicians that were telling the uncomfortable truth and repeatedly el…

> Of course, such hypocrisy is not limited to Greece, it is rather ubiquitous in modern democracies.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. " - HL Mencken.

Presumably Greece is in the getting "it good and hard" phase.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#107

Post by geezerjay » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

arijo wrote: post #39

sonnyblarney wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world runs on patrongage, or 'clientism' as you call it. Most large corporations are like that and so are Western governments. 'Getting in the door' at an entry-level job in government or even in business ... there are rules here, and tech tends to be more 'skills based' as are startups. But after that you'd be surprised how many people have the jobs just because they think they deserve them. Clearly, an…

Portugal's economy has been booming since 2015 - please resist the temptation of bad-mouthing Portugal before you understand more about it's current political, economical and social situation.

> Portugal's economy has been booming since 2015

Actually, that is not true at all.

Portugal's recession might have ended back in 2014 but since then economic growth has been anemic and below the eurozone average, and this in spite of the recent influx of cash due to the natinal golden visa program and a sudden tourism boom. Unemployment is still extremely high in spite of the national statistics presenting an unbelievable low rate close to structural unemployment levels, while real unemployment estinates point to a level above 20% for the whole active population and accompanied with an over 50% youth unemployment rate. This is obviously reflected on the nation's wages, which have stagnated for the past 8 years at pre-bailout levels.

Oh, and about 1% of the population has been emigrating from Portugal on average per year since the economic collapse in 2011.

The only way Portugal is booming is if you count implosion as a boom of sorts.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#108

Post by Nullabillity » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

throwaway66666 wrote: post #88

Eh, I might be off topic, but to me Greece seems helpless and beyond saving. Here is a personal anecdote. Before finishing university, I got a job offer by a very prestigious international company. I accepted, and decided to register myself as a freelancer so that I pay my respective taxes. But... they would not let me do that. The person at the freelancer (TEVE) office, explained to me, that since I did not finish m…

Then again, that's the same reasoning the US uses to restrict H1-B and similar visas...

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#109

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 2:49 AM UTC

ravingraven wrote: post #84

emptyfile wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious, is this what Greeks think? Its not the size of the debt or the deficit that matters but what its spent on. Take a look at pre-2009 retirement ages, number of employees in the public sector and the wages in the public sector.

All those numbers are lower or comparable to other EU countries. The public sector was not much bigger than that of e.g. Germany. The difference was its effectiveness and productivity.

You can handle a certain mass of civil servants when you have a strong private sector. The UK, France and Germany can live with it. Most of the other countries, not so much.

Re: End of Greek Aid Package as Country Faces Demographic Crisis

#110

Post by TangoTrotFox » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #103

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy. " In rural areas I think you have to start thinking more concretely about what "economy" means. With smaller populations things are much more micro than macro. One huge difference between rur…

How about instead of wasting their time hunting and foraging for food, people should spend their time improving their skill set so they can earn more than $5000 a year? You say self-sufficiency, I say inefficient subsistence hunting/farming.

It's kind of funny how people's supposed political ideologies can so quickly take a 180 isn't it? You literally just suggested 'why don't those poor people just go get better jobs'. Of course I think the problem is most people don't actually create their own ideological systems and instead just pick one 'side' or another, and adopt those beliefs as their own - even when they don't necessarily fit.

In any case, the point I was making is that not everybody wants or needs change. Some people for certain do, and I do actually agree with you (though I doubt you agree with yourself!) - going to the city and getting a job that pays way more than you'd earn in a rural area is an easy option. It's precisely what my parent did. But when looking at those that remain, you can't really compare economic systems since it's just so entirely different. And trying to 'better' rural America by implanting 6 figure remoters is going to have unclear implications.