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Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#201

Post by juliangregorian »

adventured wrote: post #185
ptaipale wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, but in comparison to European countries, U.S. taxes are low. There's only one European country (Lithuania) where tax per GDP is clearly lower than U.S. E.g. in Scandinavia, the horrors of U.S. are attributed to its "extremy low" tax status. Horrors like that rich people only live in compounds surrounded by walls and armed guards, and the poor are dying because of no health care and no food, and the mid…

What are you talking about? "Horrors like that rich people only live in compounds surrounded by walls and armed guards, and the poor are dying because of no health care and no food, and the middle class does not exist." The poor have essentially universal free healthcare in the US and have for a long time. I should know, I've used it before, and it's very easy to use. The poor also have the benefit of the one of the…

My b.s. meter is tingling at a lot of what you said (enough that on reddit I'd accuse you of being a shill), but you're being blatantly disingenuous about healthcare. It's true that emergency rooms won't turn anyone away (and maybe you bailed on the resultant bill as a "poor" college student), but Medicaid does nothing for most and even for those who qualify it gives nothing in the way of preventative care.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#202

Post by whiddershins »

Economists called the move "unprecedented."

I assume those economists never read any history at all, or they would have known debt forgiveness has been used since ancient Sumeria to help rebalance messed up economies.

https://archive.org/details/Debt-The_First_5000_Years

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#203

Post by _greim_ »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #116

Let's just look at the predictable consequences of this move: 1) Banks and other corporations will never lend money to poor people again. Full stop. If there is a chance that the government will write off that debt (effectively stealing future earnings from banks) for these loans, banks just won't issue them. Say goodbye to educational loans, healthcare loans, car loans. Say goodbye to home loans and mortgages. If yo…

I'm not an economic expert but all these points seem plausible except I was wondering about this one:

> $31M less in spending, economic growth, job creation...

Wouldn't there also be a corresponding $31M increase in spending from the people who got their debts canceled, making it a wash? They'll spend it quickly I'd imagine, on food or other necessities. Just the money would flow into the economy via a different route.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#204

Post by aswanson »

popee wrote: post #45

Hi, croat here. Just one detail, this year there will be elections in Croatia and current gov didn't do anything useful for our economy, so this is kind of popular measure. Don't get me wrong, it's always nice to help, but situation is little bit complicated, taxes are very high and in some way this is not fair to people that are paying everything. Also, there are huge number of people living and exploiting social me…

Don't apologize. Your English far outclasses my Croatian. Interesting, from what you write it seems as though Croatia is dominated by a two-party system, like here in the U.S. Is that true?

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#205

Post by narag »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #94
narag wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you expect to afford a loan if you don't have money to put aside?! The trick is you need to live somewhere. If you can't have a loan, the money goes to rent.

> The trick is you need to live somewhere. If you can't have a loan, the money goes to rent. The difference is that a landlord wants a tenant who can actually pay the rent, but banks often hand out loans that are far more than the new homeowner can afford. If a tenant can't pay their rent, the landlord will have to go through a long and painful process to remove them and find another tenant, and they'll likely be out…

The difference is that a landlord wants a tenant who can actually pay the rent...

The thread has drifted in a non-sequitur way (or maybe I misinterpreted your comment).

They were talking about saving money vs getting a loan. My comment was from the buyer's POV: you can't save for a house because you need the money to pay rent.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#206

Post by afterburner »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #189
BSousa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geesh. I'm no Greek and not fond of Syriza, but god damn, the brainwashing is strong here. a) fraud the state's accountings: True, but the difference was minimal (2.7% or so to 3.07%, and by fraud you mean they accounted for the expenses on arrival and not when ordering, not cook your books). Also, this was well known by all the other countries and none of them made a peep at the time b) get as many as you can before…

This post has no connection with reality, I have no clue why it's upvoted. a) Regarding the state accounting fraud: first of all, using the past tense ("was") is misleading. As of last year, Greece was still cooking its books[0]. It remains to be seen if they have actually stopped. You say the difference was minimal. When? When they brought in Georgiou to fix the Greek statistics service, the 2009 deficit was revised…

Your response is hyperbolic. I also think you seem to have misunderstood (c), which is simply stating what has happened: 1) most debt are owed to French and German banks, and in order to pay them 2) the country prioritized these repayments over all else which 3) tanked the Greek economy and made all this private debt the taxpayer's problem; 4) 250b is the amount Greece received and its government financed are about 20b.

d) the troika seems to have the power to destroy the Greek economy by demanding repayments, which until now has worked because the Greek government itself did as the troika demanded. If that's not power I don't know what is. It's certainly not "zero" power.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#207

Post by juliangregorian »

zo1 wrote: post #90
rhino369 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coffee shop isn't a restaurant.

Well, a restaurant isn't the only business venture an individual can get into. Just the other day I saw meme-photo (can't vouch for the validity/truthfulness) about a woman that made money at the beach by attaching balloons filled with margharita mix over her breasts. And charging party-goers (probably mostly male) for the chance to drink out of them. Ridiculous and asinine example, but I bet she started off with no…

Do you libertarians even listen to yourselves? The amount of disease that would spread... "hustling sketchy shit" is not a sustainable model of entrepreneurship.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#208

Post by puerto »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #116

Let's just look at the predictable consequences of this move: 1) Banks and other corporations will never lend money to poor people again. Full stop. If there is a chance that the government will write off that debt (effectively stealing future earnings from banks) for these loans, banks just won't issue them. Say goodbye to educational loans, healthcare loans, car loans. Say goodbye to home loans and mortgages. If yo…

Four years ago, Croatian government subsidised loans for buying properties. They used public money to help people without any savings to go in debt, so they can buy houses. Why? Because during the construction bubble, banks invested a lot in buildings that can't be sold (world crisis hit). Under disguise of helping young people getting their first property, they helped banks get rid of the dead capital and earn more money on loans. Subsidies went for interests for the first four years of payment. What about rational hard working people who saved and didn't need a loan? They got nothing. Why this wasn't in Washington Post? Government paying you to go in debt in a country high in debt isn't controversial, but banks cancelling it for people who can't pay it off is?

You think this move is bad for the banks and telco's? I bet it was their idea in the first place, government is too impotent and incompetent for anything. Throwing whole families out on the street is bad PR, for them and the government, and this way they can pay it off with some change money they were never going to see anyway.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#210

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ptaipale wrote: post #192
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top countries by home ownership are Romania, Lithuania and Hungary, while UK and US are in the 33st/34th position and Germany/Switzerland 10 positions That has very little to do with the question. Housing costs the same amount to construct whether it's rented as apartments or sold as condominiums and the amount people are paying in rent is generally sufficient for the owner of the apartment to turn a profit. Th…

> The reason renters can't buy is that they have bad credit and no down payment. At least over here, the reason is not bad credit nor need for down payment. The reason is that they do not have enough regular, stable income. Their rents are subsidized, but the same subsidy is not available for buying property. Which does make some sense, of course. > Making housing affordable is easy: Subsidize the construction of hig…

> Their rents are subsidized, but the same subsidy is not available for buying property.

That's just a whole different brand of stupidity. If you're going to subsidize people, just give them the money and let people decide whether it's more important that they pay rent or buy a house or live with parents and go to college etc. Central planning bureaucrats are going to get it wrong nine times out of ten.

> Generally, in European countries and areas with high demand for housing, subsidizing construction is not necessary, and could be counter-productive. Making land available for construction is enough.

What land? You can't make land. There is plenty of land in the middle of the desert or the tundra but nobody wants to live there. What you need is to find some old two story apartments in places where people actually want to live and put twelve story condos there instead. Or in bigger cities, replace the twelve story buildings with fifty story ones.

You don't even need subsidies. That is what the market would do naturally when housing is expensive, the problem is local governments actively interfere with it. Existing residents don't want the homes they already own to go down in value when the housing supply increases, so they throw up a bunch of zoning regulations that de facto prohibit the construction of high density housing.

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