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Greece

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Re: Greece

#201

Post by snitko »

parasubvert wrote: post #195
snitko wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one difference. When you have a government, it indebts people, who do not necessarily agree or understand the terms and the consequences. You cannot reasonably argue that because 50% voted for that government, 100% should face the consequences.

Actually, I can reasonably argue that. We get the government the majority wants (subject to filtering by the property holding oligarchy). I would much rather have that than a libertarian dystopia, which would be pure oligarchy in practice.

That's not an argument. That's a preference to which you'd like to forcefully subject people who disagree with you.

Re: Greece

#202

Post by PhantomGremlin »

crdoconnor wrote: post #177
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, an "experiment". Really a "thought experiment" since I don't see this being constitutional anywhere in the USA, and I'm not familiar enough with other countries to know where it could be tried. Here's something simpler: Look at your previous year Federal tax return. If it shows that you paid even $1 in taxes, you get a vote in Federal elections. If not, then no vote. Same with State taxes. Simple enough?…

>Here's something simpler: Look at your previous year Federal tax return. If it shows that you paid even $1 in taxes, you get a vote in Federal elections. >Simple enough? Or would that still give too much representation to "the wealthy"? No, but then again it's not substantially different to what we already have, so I don't see the point. WTF is up with your quotation marks anyway?

According to one article, 46% of US households didn't pay any Federal income taxes in 2011.[1]

That was the observation that got Romney in trouble. If those people weren't voting, that would be a very substantially different to what we have now. E.g. quite likely Romney would be president. (Let's not debate if Romney would have done better than Obama. Too much of a tangent.)

You're absolutely right about the "quotation marks". :) I went way overboard. Please accept an upvote as an apology.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/18/w...

Edit: I forgot that, to a considerable minority of people, Romney and Obama aren't substantially different. It's easy to think Republican vs Democrat is the entirety of the political spectrum, but it's not.

Re: Greece

#203

Post by parasubvert »

snitko wrote: post #201
parasubvert wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I can reasonably argue that. We get the government the majority wants (subject to filtering by the property holding oligarchy). I would much rather have that than a libertarian dystopia, which would be pure oligarchy in practice.

That's not an argument. That's a preference to which you'd like to forcefully subject people who disagree with you.

It was an argument: it had premises and a conclusion. The premises happen to disagree with yours.

The premise might expose a preference but that's because we are debating politics, wherein at some points up the chain of logical reasoning, one needs to pick preferences among conflicting principles.

Re: Greece

#204

Post by MagnumOpus »

elorant wrote: post #168
huhtenberg wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he is actually making the best of it Please tell me you were making a joke. Trying to collect WW2 "debt" from Germany? Using "insulted dignity" as an argument in financial negotiations? Deliberately setting up the referendum after the deadline and then "pleading" for extension? Really? He is pulling all the stops, granted, but they are nothing short of sleazy and obnoxious. If EU are to cave in, it would basically…

There are two kinds of debt claims relating to WWII. One is war reparations. We didn’t received any from Germany and chances are we never will. I assume you have no idea to the extent of damages done by Germans in Greece during the war. They destroyed 80% of our infrastructure. Besides Poland, Greece suffered the most damages during the war. But given that all that happened 70 years ago we should bury the hatchets an…

> war reparations. We didn’t received any from Germany and chances are we never will

Incorrect. West Germany paid 115 million Deutschmarks to Greek victims of Nazi crimes in 1960 (a lot more than the $45 million reparations that were demanded by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty), while victims of the forced labour camps were also compensated individually.

Shame on you for spreading bald faced lies.

Re: Greece

#205

Post by pvaldes »

pvaldes wrote: post #200
hebdo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only in films. Are you trying to say that the current Germany is not the direct descendant of the Nazi Germany? Then how did it come into existence? Is it a brand new nation conjured out of thin air after the Yalta and Potsdam conferences? Pay attention please that I did not say that it is the same nation, but that it is the direct descendant . Surely the majority of living Germans had nothing to do with NSDAP, bec…

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. > Then how did it come into existence? I thing that inmigration played a role. Unless you count the 2 millions of german-turkish people and 200.000 german jews as nazis in disguise of course (This will explain the big suspicious moustaches, otherwise). And italian, spanish, greeks... lots of croats also. See 'gastarbeiter'.

s/thing/think/

Re: Greece

#206

Post by elorant »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #204
elorant wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two kinds of debt claims relating to WWII. One is war reparations. We didn’t received any from Germany and chances are we never will. I assume you have no idea to the extent of damages done by Germans in Greece during the war. They destroyed 80% of our infrastructure. Besides Poland, Greece suffered the most damages during the war. But given that all that happened 70 years ago we should bury the hatchets an…

> war reparations. We didn’t received any from Germany and chances are we never will Incorrect. West Germany paid 115 million Deutschmarks to Greek victims of Nazi crimes in 1960 (a lot more than the $45 million reparations that were demanded by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty), while victims of the forced labour camps were also compensated individually. Shame on you for spreading bald faced lies.

The unconvenient truth that none of you fuckers wants to admit:

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/24456-the-math-of-mas...

Re: Greece

#208

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

mistermann wrote: post #98

I really don't know that much of the details of this particular situation, I've grown tired of hearing about this sort of thing. I RTFA and it was interesting, but then it's always interesting, isn't it. I was surprised that a CTRL+F "Icelend" in this thread turned up nothing. While I'm sure there were many differences in their situation, I bet there were a lot more similarities. My crude analysis of this situation i…

Iceland is quite a different story: 1. It isn't a part of the eurozone 2. Its economy actually works 3. The debt was not in the slightest a people's fault

Re: Greece

#209

Post by lhl »

mike_hearn wrote: post #26
lhl wrote: post #15

This is an interesting take on things w/ a lot of merit, but I think Vox actually summed it up better here w/ a short video and a longer article: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/30/8867939/greece-economic-crisis Until/unless the rich European countries are willing to subsidize the poorer countries, as a financial union, the Euro is just a complete non-starter since the fiscal policies these states need are so far apart.

The notion that a country like Greece needs a different currency or fiscal policy to Germany isn't really true. Ultimately whether they print New Drachma and hyperinflate themselves into poverty or whether they accept massive pay cuts/import drops doesn't make much difference - they are two roads that lead to the same outcome. Greece could become competitive without leaving the Euro. However, it means actually tellin…

Devaluation actual has real, not psychological impacts in debt repayment and import/export.

Whether printing more money would lead to a liquidity trap is above my pay grade, but empirically (the past 5 years, and every single austerity program in history), imposing austerity has been to shown, to not work, and it's a precondition if they want to keep using Euros. Based on current/future loan terms, Greece will never be able to grow their GDP to meet their repayment schedule.

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