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Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

syriza.net.gr

211–220 of 249 posts

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#211
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Germans are not more frugal than other people. The main issue behind lacklustre German consumption is that neither their wages nor their investment in infrastructure has kept pace with their productivity growth.

What's your source, your intuition? Germany is one of the highest savers in the Euro area; much higher than Greece. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.ZS

This table does not mention personal savings. It is cannot provide insight, is as useless as GPD per capita.

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#212
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, most of the German war reparations after WWI should probably be repaid. The exception is whatever Germany paid to Belgium, which should be augmented with reparations from France and Great Britain. (And I assume you meant Balkan instead of Baltic.)

I agree Germany should pay war reperations. As should Greece to Turkey and the Balkan for their invasions there, as should France to Germany for the napoleonic wars, Sweden to my hometown where they've killed nearly everyone and razed the city, the US for Vietnam to Laos. All the colonial powers should pay what they stole from their colonies, the UK to India, France to Africa. The US to the Philipines. France and the…

LOL, you can go as back as Sparta if you like but the fact remains: NO other country started 2 WWs.

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#213
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, most of the German war reparations after WWI should probably be repaid. The exception is whatever Germany paid to Belgium, which should be augmented with reparations from France and Great Britain. (And I assume you meant Balkan instead of Baltic.)

I agree Germany should pay war reperations. As should Greece to Turkey and the Balkan for their invasions there, as should France to Germany for the napoleonic wars, Sweden to my hometown where they've killed nearly everyone and razed the city, the US for Vietnam to Laos. All the colonial powers should pay what they stole from their colonies, the UK to India, France to Africa. The US to the Philipines. France and the…

[Added] The US should return the land to the natives.

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#214
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> populist clowns Calling a dissenting party clowns is not helpful. It's also wrong, since they argue their points well and their economics are backed by such people as Paul Krugman. Now you might disagree with him, but would you call him a clown, too?

Paul Krugman is overrated, and you're drastically simplifying to say he's backing their economics. I'm mostly calling them clowns for the disservice they do their own cause by calling debt repayment economic waterboarding.

Economic waterboarding was leaving just enough air to the economy to think it can breathe. Forcing a 4.5% budget surplus which evem countries in better financial position can support is meaningless. You might consifer him overrated but regarding the European crisis his predictions were pretty much accurate although against most financial institutions' predictions

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#215
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, most of the German war reparations after WWI should probably be repaid. The exception is whatever Germany paid to Belgium, which should be augmented with reparations from France and Great Britain. (And I assume you meant Balkan instead of Baltic.)

I agree Germany should pay war reperations. As should Greece to Turkey and the Balkan for their invasions there, as should France to Germany for the napoleonic wars, Sweden to my hometown where they've killed nearly everyone and razed the city, the US for Vietnam to Laos. All the colonial powers should pay what they stole from their colonies, the UK to India, France to Africa. The US to the Philipines. France and the…

@atmosx: So your point is, only WW reperations need to be paid, if you invade a neighbour and massacre the people there, you needn't? Looks a little too specialized to be a general moral rule.

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#216
post #8

Sure. I agree that (morally) the EU shouldn't have bailed out Greece. Greece cooked its books and Greek debt holders at the time of the bail out were suffering the consequences of lending to a fiscally irresponsible state. That being said, the world was uncertain as to how much economic damage had yet to be done, and by shoring up Greece it assuaged investor confidence across the western world. Personally I think tha…

German pension system is also unsustainable [0] and [1]. Form [1] "State pension obligations in France and Germany are three times the size of their economies, according to data compiled by Mercer. It’s more sustainable in France than Germany because of France’s higher birthrate. "

It is just that during the Greek system villification, equivalent problems in German economy are suppressed in German media.

[0] http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/boerschenglish.pdf [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-11/europe-s-3...

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany deviates from the European norm by having products on offer that are globally competitive. What a crime. Let's make Europe more stable by turning every country into Greece!

Competitiveness is a matter not just of value, but also of price, which is largely a matter of how much you pay your employees. Germany achieves its competitiveness by paying employees badly. That is a not a virtue, it's a vice. That's the key here, and again I encourage you to read and contemplate the post that I linked to, since it clarifies the issue.

Krugman's article like everything he writes is not insightful. Wages are no per-se too high or too low, but rather relative to wage levels of competitors and desirability of produced goods. Germany competes in a global market and in that global market Germany is a high-wage country. When it had higher averages wages, Germany lost its competitive edge.

Here are more interesting questions: which are the average wages paid in Greece appropriate for the product Greece seeks to sell? Which products from Greece do you buy on a regular basis? Greek smartphones? Greek cars? Greek chemical products?

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#218
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he already said he doesn't want more money. The latest, 7 billion euro loan was declined by Greece. It's all over the news

Now that's interesting because the French newspapers didn't mention it at all. I wish we had a European press.

http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2015/01/31/la-grece-se-...

Re: Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece

#220

A CNN article from 2010 referenced 2008 government documents that said "6 in 10 Greeks don't pay income taxes" source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/31/greece.taxes/ I don't know what the rate of tax evasion is in other western countries, but I'm willing to wager the situation in Greece is dramatically worse. I remember reading a NYT article from the same year that provided further insight: Various studies,…

Fiscal austerity one form or another has been a decade long process in Greece. After that the employment ratio in Greek population is the third lowest in OECD countries [0]. This ofcourse is hidden in plain view since discussion is usually about the UNemployment ratio [1], which hides long term unemployed due to the economic downturn.

The Federation of Greek Industries is not a credible speaker and they had published that report to justify lowering their request to lower their taxes. It was affiliated with the right wing Government.

Kolonaki is a doctors area, old and young doctors try to set upo shop there. If half of them are young doctors 40000 is too much. The authorities that wanted to collect taxes figured that out and measured a minimal squarea area of the doctors office and location and imposed arbitrary fines. Same arbitrary taxes were imposed in most professions to show a long term ability to collect taxes, in collaboration with their foreign creditors, Of course it did not work out their creditors could hide the inefficiency of their program to chating Greeks. It also worked as a Trojan Horse in the Greek socity, when various groups where singled out in rotation as not having produced the taxes that were expeced of them. The troika and the Greek Government would probably be able to expose some of them, but it was apparent that it would be small sums that would expose the greater inablility of their program. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment-to-population_ratio

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