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Einbauschrank posted:There was a report about the Greek pension office making registration mandatory. Out of 1 million claimants only 890.000 had themselves registered. The office estimates that they might be paying 1,5billion € to dead people - a year. They also realized that they have a much higher number of very old aged people: 9000 Greeks receiving pensions are older than 100 and 500 are even older than 110. One guy was even 130. Seems that eating olives and not paying taxes is a healthy combination. The Olympic games cost around 8-10 billion Euros to put it in perspective, and I don't see collective punishment for pension fraud to be a satisfactory response. The Greek elite have failed at running their country, it should be them and the financiers that back them that should pay not the people of the country. They are fundamentally incompetent criminals.
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Oct 19, 2011 10:48
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Landsknecht posted:Reform needs to happen on a massive level in all the eurozone economies, as we're basically hosed in 15-25 years. There is an interesting quirk about the European growth model that was pointed out to me by a guy I work with who was an economist in his previous career. The premise of growth is based on productivity growth. Even if you have more people retiring than entering the workforce (i.e. a demographic problem), you can still see growth if those new workers are able to produce more than the old ones. And it's not about over working people, it's about technological advancements that enable fewer people to do more stuff, i.e. being more productive in the economic sense. Germany is good at doing "hard" stuff like engineering, which requires a highly skilled workforce. That is why you can get paid to go to university and study here. The bet is that 1 engineer can do as much productivity wise as a few unskilled workers, so with the demographics trending to a smaller pool of available workers, they are better off focussing on training more engineers. It's something I think Germany does pretty well, and they are trying to solve the demographic problem by encouraging people to have babies. There are not a lot of other options if they want to head off a crisis down the line. If it will work or not I have no idea. Germany does have a rather high level of debt as a % of GDP. Inflation would help reduce that, but it would also dig in to pensions, and as a whole they seem pretty terrified of inflation. I have a bunch of cousins here in Berlin who all early-mid twenties and just assume everything will be the same in 40 years when they are retiring, it makes me cringe. The whole growth through productivity gains thing isn't going to do a scrap for the current crisis because a) it involves a lot of investment (not austerity!@) and b) it takes a long time (in the order of generations) for its effects to be realised. Ardennes posted:The Greek elite have failed at running their country, it should be them and the financiers that back them that should pay not the people of the country. They are fundamentally incompetent criminals. This is totally the problem and I agree any solution is basically just going to gently caress the Greek people in the name of EU stability or financial stability or both. It's disgusting.
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Oct 19, 2011 11:23
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unixbeard posted:I have a bunch of cousins here in Berlin who all early-mid twenties and just assume everything will be the same in 40 years when they are retiring, it makes me cringe. Tat's crazy. I know no one who thinks things will be the same even in 20 years. In a weird way I'm actually looking forward to poo poo falling apart. 
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Oct 19, 2011 12:38
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You probably played too much Fallout. Anyway, getting back to the school/Abitur discussion: http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,792562,00.html Looks like some experts have a proposal for a slighty different abitur system: In addition to the regular abitur exams, they propose nationwide, centralized tests in german, maths and english. Those would be 90 minutes each and are supposed to be written nationwide on the same day. The tests would be created and later corrected by a centralized body. They propose multiple choice or essays as an alternative. Tests would count 10 % towards your abitur grade. If I take my abitur from days of yore. I would have done these stupid tests in german, maths and english and then 5 hour exams in english, social sciences, maths and an oral exam in history. Looks a bit redundant. a. So you create all this bureaucracy for a measly 10 %? b. One day, three tests in 3 different subjects? Who really thinks that is a good idea? c. Multiple choice sucks. d. Won't happen anyway. elwood fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 13:11
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Ardennes posted:The Greek elite have failed at running their country, it should be them and the financiers that back them that should pay not the people of the country. They are fundamentally incompetent criminals. I don't think it was the Greek elite who invented a massive pension fraud. And even the Greek elites had to be elected by someone. Though, it is true, if all parties involved are corrupt nepotists it is difficult to induce a change as a voter. Perhaps they should have demonstrated earlier. Finally, as long as Greece is considered to be a sovereign and democratic state, it is solely responsible for the amount of debts it has made. Elite Bashing is alright, especially in a failed state. But it shouldn't divert from the fact that the "regular guy on the street" profiteered as well from fraud and stupid debt making. Greek incomes all over the board have skyrocketed - apparently without the economic growth or increase in productivy to back them up. The "regular people" are angry, because the saying "public debts will have to be paid back by our children" proved to be wrong. They have to pay them back during their lifetime instead of leaving others to deal with it. That's the outrage.
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Oct 19, 2011 13:30
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elwood posted:You probably played too much Fallout. a. I'm pretty sure the idea is to gradually raise the importance of the test and aim for homogenized standards all over the country which is a good idea, gently caress the Bayernabitur. b. Sure it's 3 different subjects but it's only 90 minutes each and you can adjust the test to take into consideration the comparatively more stressful day. The ultimate goal is to see who will cut it in university and if they can't concentrate for 4 and a half hours that probably isn't the case. Having this system additionally to the current exams is stupid. But if you take away some time from the 3 hours you currently have to find the symbolism in one of Goebbels' speeches you'll end up with a German exam that doesn't focus on a single topic. c. Yeah it does, but if you have a handful of them with popper Klausuraufgaben it's an effective way to get some good insights into what the student knows and still seeing how he presents an argument. d. Not in a short timeframe but in the long haul it probably will. We already have started with standardized tests on a state level in the Haupt- and Realschulen. Sooner or later those will go nationwide and I'd be pretty surprised if the Gymnasien don't have at least a state-wide test by then. As it stands you have wildly different standards in the same school type throughout the country for no good reason whatsoever. What is that you have a 1,0 from a school in Brandenburg? That's nice but I'll search for someone that has better qualification, that feller from Bavaria looks promising, he's managed to get a 3,5.
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Oct 19, 2011 13:49
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There is literally no way in hell the Länder will give up their sovereignty on education.
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Oct 19, 2011 13:54
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Einbauschrank posted:I don't think it was the Greek elite who invented a massive pension fraud. And even the Greek elites had to be elected by someone. Though, it is true, if all parties involved are corrupt nepotists it is difficult to induce a change as a voter. Perhaps they should have demonstrated earlier. Things have to be scaled correctly. The average guy in the street did not profiteer from it other than in a very indirect way. There's a fine distinction to be made between the 'most people' and 'lots of people'. If 100,000 people are in the corruption game in Greece that's awful, but that's still only 1% of the population. The 10,500,000 left should not have to pay for them. Secondly, the problem is not an overblown public sector or inflated welfare cheats which are absolutely large but relatively small, but the euro architecture at its core. Greece benefited a lot of the EU in the 80's and 90's, but the euro eventually meant Greeks receiving loans due to low pan-European interest rates to consume German produced merchandise (cars, electronics etc) while German wages stagnated. The first sucker were the German workers who instead of receiving a larger piece of the pie sent via banks their money to Greece. The second suckers are the large part of the Greek population who are now called in to pay the increased consumption of the few. The large winners are part of the Greek and German elite who made a kill on profits throughout those 10 years. Pitting Greek workers against German workers is their ultimate success. They should both band up to lynch their elites.
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Oct 19, 2011 16:00
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A ton of German banks gave money to Greece. They should all pay for the risks they took.
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Oct 19, 2011 16:29
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Ymel posted:Things have to be scaled correctly. This is so true. Also look at the bailouts. The German people don't want their money going to Greece and the Greek people don't want to have the money and guess what happens? None of the politicians give a poo poo about the people in the street.
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Oct 19, 2011 16:34
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Ymel posted:Things have to be scaled correctly. 100.000 out of 1 Million (the number of people receving a pension) is 10%. I don't say that every Greek is corrupt, but that the whole system is corrupt and doesn't work. I don't know how many Greek shopkeepers have even a cash register to pay their due amount of taxes or how many taxi drivers really keep book - apart from the fact that being a taxi driver was more exclusive than being a working professional, this should show why the Greek system was corrupt from the core. A fish may start stinking from the head but it still may be corrupted to the core. quote:Secondly, the problem is not an overblown public sector or inflated welfare cheats which are absolutely large but relatively small, but the euro architecture at its core. Greece has an overblown public sector. About every fourth Greek is working for the state. (770K officials another 300K are normal employees). So ~ 1 million employees in Greece (about 1 in 4 Greeks works directly for the state) vs. 4.5millions in Germany - with 7 times the population. If twice as many isn't overblown I don't know what is. The public sector pays very well, too. A train driver could earn as much as 3500€, a train driver in Germany earns about 2200€. So, yes, the Average Joe was part of the system. quote:Greece benefited a lot of the EU in the 80's and 90's, but the euro eventually meant Greeks receiving loans due to low pan-European interest rates to consume German produced merchandise (cars, electronics etc) while German wages stagnated. And Greek wages skyrocketed by 40% (!) between 2000 and 2008. So the Average Ioannis from Greece enjoyed rising wages financed by debts to afford German products produced by Average Johannes with stagnating wages. And now Average Ioannis doesn't want to pay back the debts but wants Average Johannes to jump in. Sorry, that's not elites sucking dry the working poor, that's the cricket trying to live off the ant. quote:The first sucker were the German workers who instead of receiving a larger piece of the pie sent via banks their money to Greece. The second suckers are the large part of the Greek population who are now called in to pay the increased consumption of the few. I don't think it was a consumption "of the few" as the wages were raised across the board. And as the interest rate was very low - as you said - in the first years I neither think the banks made a killing. Those who made debts or voted for those who made debts should pay these debts. And if it means they have to start paying taxes or reduce their wgaes to a level befitting their productivity, they should do so. It the Greeks want to suck dry their "Elites" to pay their debts: That's nobody's business but the Greeks'. But if they want to suck dry everybody else or blackmail the whole of Europe with threats of default (even though Greece is not bankrupt, they are simply not willing to economize and pay), it becomes a European problem.
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Oct 19, 2011 18:36
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Ioannis was living really good of all of our money!quote:Lebenshaltungskosten http://www.ba-auslandsvermittlung.de/lang_de/nn_2856/DE/LaenderEU/Griechenland/Arbeiten/arbeiten-knoten.html__nnn=true Can't read German: According to the German Bundesagentur für Arbeit (hardly known for anti-capitalist propaganda), the cost of living in Greece are slightly less than in Germany, the average employee income however is merely 41% of the average German income.
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Oct 19, 2011 19:51
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^^^ba posted:Sozialabgaben und Steuern While the wages are lower, so are their taxes etc. and that doesn't even touch on the subject of systemic tax evasion and fraud. Orange Devil posted:This is so true. Also look at the bailouts. The German people don't want their money going to Greece and the Greek people don't want to have the money and guess what happens? None of the politicians give a poo poo about the people in the street. The people in the street also hate living near mosques and want the death penalty for child molesters, the people in the streets are the bloodthirsty mob that starts lynching witches whenever the harvest fails. Politicians have to act in the interest of the people that includes making unpopular decisions, just because the housewife across the street things that a bailout isn't justified doesn't make it true. Do you honestly think the people in the street have read the reports, bills or underlying contracts and can put forward an informed opinion about the macroeconomic scenarios that are involved if a major bank or another european state keels over? The politicians don't give a poo poo about the people in the street because those fuckers are hanging out in the street instead of informing themselves or shutting the hell up. hankor fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 20:08
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dreamin' posted:Ioannis was living really good of all of our money! If you want to know whether somebody is living beyond his means it doesn't help to compare him to another person. Life is better in Germany from a purely materialistic point of view. But life in Greece has become better and better due to the bubble economy induced by dedebt making. It is important to note that Ioannis lived much better in 2010 than in 2000 and that his increase in the standard of living wasn't due to an increase in productivity. It is a convenient myth that the "little man on the street" didn't profit. Greece pursued a vulgar verison of "deficit spending" (i.e.: deficit spending without the paying back thingy) and it showed on every level. Now it is time to sober up.
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Oct 19, 2011 20:40
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hankor posted:The people in the street also hate living near mosques and want the death penalty for child molesters, the people in the streets are the bloodthirsty mob that starts lynching witches whenever the harvest fails. That's a bit simplistic don't you think? 
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Oct 19, 2011 20:46
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Einbauschrank posted:If you want to know whether somebody is living beyond his means it doesn't help to compare him to another person. Life is better in Germany from a purely materialistic point of view. But life in Greece has become better and better due to the bubble economy induced by dedebt making. It is important to note that Ioannis lived much better in 2010 than in 2000 and that his increase in the standard of living wasn't due to an increase in productivity. "Sobering up" ie putting the country in a depression so there is absolutely no way for it to pay back its debts, brilliant.
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Oct 19, 2011 20:47
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Ardennes posted:"Sobering up" ie putting the country in a depression so there is absolutely no way for it to pay back its debts, brilliant. There's no easy way out of a bubble economy, it is the catching up of reality with an illusion. The only way to deal with a bubble is to let it burst, and sadly, to say goodbye to the wealth the "illusionary growth" of the last decade has brought and start again from scratch. At the moment the European institutions are walking a very fine edge between carrot and stick to nudge the corrupt Greek state on the path to reforms. I am not entirely convinced it will work out or that it will be worth the risk to have other states pulled into this quagmire. But I don't have a easy solution either.
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Oct 19, 2011 21:07
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Einbauschrank posted:The only way to deal with a bubble is to let it burst, and sadly I don't get how letting a bubble burst is "dealing with it", since the bursting is the problem you're trying to avoid in the first place. Wouldn't you deal with a bubble by safely deflating it?
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Oct 19, 2011 21:10
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niethan posted:I don't get how letting a bubble burst is "dealing with it", since the bursting is the problem you're trying to avoid in the first place. Wouldn't you deal with a bubble by safely deflating it? That's what the EU is trying to do at the moment: They create a small bubble within the collapsing bubble by pouring cheap money into Greece. That way they try to control the speed of collapse. They could let Greece crash (something nobody dares to want) or they can keep the money coming - under the condition that the Greek state stops being a corrupt and money gobbling shithole. Of course the unions and the commie-doomsayers in the streets don't want reforms, so they are on a rampage. But I agree that my wording was crap.
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Oct 19, 2011 21:37
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Einbauschrank posted:That's what the EU is trying to do at the moment: They create a small bubble within the collapsing bubble by pouring cheap money into Greece. That way they try to control the speed of collapse. They could let Greece crash (something nobody dares to want) or they can keep the money coming - under the condition that the Greek state stops being a corrupt and money gobbling shithole. Of course the unions and the commie-doomsayers in the streets don't want reforms, so they are on a rampage. Yeah, it isn't just your wording. I really don't think you understand how austerity measures are just going to cause needless destruction to the economy, this isn't some sort of stupid RBC non-sense, the measures are directly causing the depression. Also, looking at the approval ratings and the riots, it is more than some troublemakers. Everyone in Greece loving hates this for good reason, it is about the poor paying for the sins of the rich. Edit: In addition, you ignore the fact that the only reason Greece needed these loans in the first place is that they are apart of the Euro-Zone, and if they were still on the Drachma this wouldn't be a issue. Basically, your playing the blame game, because there is pension fraud and other fraud in Greece it is okay to mangle their entire society and ignore how the direct actions of European and Greek leaders had in designing it. If the Greek people were told that the Euro have probably ended up like this, I doubt any of them would have supported joining the zone in the first place. The leaders and their economists knew the risks, but they never communicated them to the public. In the end it is about blaming the victim. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 21:58
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Einbauschrank posted:100.000 out of 1 Million (the number of people receving a pension) is 10%. I don't say that every Greek is corrupt, but that the whole system is corrupt and doesn't work. I don't know how many Greek shopkeepers have even a cash register to pay their due amount of taxes or how many taxi drivers really keep book - apart from the fact that being a taxi driver was more exclusive than being a working professional, this should show why the Greek system was corrupt from the core. A fish may start stinking from the head but it still may be corrupted to the core. Ι searched for the data on this and there are 1,473 cases of dead people whose relatives or the postman are receiving their pensions. There are 8,500 cases of people above 90 receiving a pension and they are still searching how many of those are alive. So I fail to see how 100,000 are 'cheating' the system. Not being registered is not the same as cheating. You are correct that tax evasion is rife. But think about it like that. Even if say 500,000 people are cheating the system, that's still 5% of the people. Hell, let's make it 20%. Why should the 80% of the rest pay? There's still a justice issue and obviously the rest are not just going to sit and say we are all in this together. Einbauschrank posted:Greece has an overblown public sector. About every fourth Greek is working for the state. (770K officials another 300K are normal employees). So ~ 1 million employees in Greece (about 1 in 4 Greeks works directly for the state) vs. 4.5millions in Germany - with 7 times the population. If twice as many isn't overblown I don't know what is. Greek government spending is 46% of GDP (with the newest revisions), which is approximately in line (a little bigger) with the rest of the EU. There's either too many people working for peanuts, there is no welfare state or there's few people getting rich salaries. Your scenario of tons of people getting crazy money is arithmetically impossible. It's definitely inefficient, but not as terribly large as people make it out to be. The Greek state is however not collecting enough money and its revenues as % of GDP are substantially lower than the rest of the EU. Again, there are people who cheated the tax system and that's correct, but the biggest tax evaders are lawyers, doctors etc. i.e. the rich. So a teacher in the public sector isn't happy to see his salary halved but he has to get hosed because somebody else cheated on taxes? Einbauschrank posted:The public sector pays very well, too. A train driver could earn as much as 3500€, a train driver in Germany earns about 2200€. So, yes, the Average Joe was part of the system. This is horseshit. Yes, you can find individuals who gain tons of money in public sectors everywhere due to strong unions or political connections or whatnot. Ticket inspectors in DK receive 5000€ per month and I haven't heard of the miraculous advances in ticket inspecting productivity. The fact remains that the mean, median and any other metric of salary is lower in Greece than most states in the EU. The new teacher salary post crisis is 580€ down from 1080€ before the crisis. The salary for newly hired engineers before the crisis was 800€. PhD students in sciences are doing unpaid doctorates. Meanwhile, prices are about the same level as Germany. No, these people don't have any moral obligation whatsoever to pay anymore. Einbauschrank posted:And Greek wages skyrocketed by 40% (!) between 2000 and 2008. So the Average Ioannis from Greece enjoyed rising wages financed by debts to afford German products produced by Average Johannes with stagnating wages. And now Average Ioannis doesn't want to pay back the debts but wants Average Johannes to jump in. Sorry, that's not elites sucking dry the working poor, that's the cricket trying to live off the ant. Yes, that's the core of the problem. Instead of Germany inflating its economy to balance fiscal and current account balances, the government decided to gently caress its workers over. The result was bigger profits for German companies and due to the Euro, easier access to capital starving economies where they made higher returns. All of this would have never happened if German wages kept rising with productivity. Instead German governments' metaphysical faith in austerity is leading Europe to ruin. Einbauschrank posted:I don't think it was a consumption "of the few" as the wages were raised across the board. And as the interest rate was very low - as you said - in the first years I neither think the banks made a killing. Those who made debts or voted for those who made debts should pay these debts. And if it means they have to start paying taxes or reduce their wgaes to a level befitting their productivity, they should do so. That's not the racket. The racket is investing in low-interest, high return countries. Siemens gets a cheap loan, installs traffic system in Greece, pockets a hefty premium for bribing 10 officials and then gets the advantage of paying peanut wages too. Noone doubts their integrity because they are Germans and 'these things don't happen there'. The financial system put money where capital was scarce and got hefty returns for it. Siemens made billions and billions by bribing every official they stumbled upon. The people who financed Siemens also got their slice, even if they got burnt later on with bonds. Why don't you ask Siemens to pay instead of Johannes? Instead of that, Siemens today has the luxury of directly parking its money in the ECB to be as safe as possible. Let's not even mention the weapons racket where even today the German government is pushing Greece to buy submarines and poo poo they don't need while demanding lower salaries at the same time. Einbauschrank posted:It the Greeks want to suck dry their "Elites" to pay their debts: That's nobody's business but the Greeks'. But if they want to suck dry everybody else or blackmail the whole of Europe with threats of default (even though Greece is not bankrupt, they are simply not willing to economize and pay), it becomes a European problem. Greek wages are back to 1983 levels. Everything they gained from the EU has been lost. Sure, austerity had to happen to some degree. But what is happening is the extermination of a people. The least bad thing for everyone is a bailout. But if everyone else is finding this reprehensible, the only correct moral stance of any Greek government is immediate obligatory default, not lead its people to the slaughter. Ymel fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 22:57
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elwood posted:That's a bit simplistic don't you think? Of course it is, but so is blindly bowing to the general public just because they are misinformed.  
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Oct 20, 2011 01:03
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Einbauschrank, how can you argue in one post that Ioannis is earning 3500€ for the same job that a worker in Germany earns 2200€, and when it's shown to you that it's total bullshit, counter with "but the taxes are lower and they all cheat!" without blushing?
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Oct 20, 2011 09:09
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, it isn't just your wording. Since the Greek economy was thriving on a cheap influx of borrowed money this isn't surprising. But the reason the economy is crashing, isn't the "austerity" but rather the preceding bubble boom. quote:Also, looking at the approval ratings and the riots, it is more than some troublemakers. Everyone in Greece loving hates this for good reason, it is about the poor paying for the sins of the rich. Here we read that the riots are instigated by an extremist minority. And, again, I think the Greek sins are the sins of a whole economy, not of a few rich, even if it is more convenient to blame "the others". quote:In addition, you ignore the fact that the only reason Greece needed these loans in the first place is that they are apart of the Euro-Zone, and if they were still on the Drachma this wouldn't be a issue. Basically, your playing the blame game, because there is pension fraud and other fraud in Greece it is okay to mangle their entire society and ignore how the direct actions of European and Greek leaders had in designing it. It isn't always about a poor helpless victim, sometime the cat got stuck in the tree out of sheer stupidity. I doubt anybody in Europe would have wanted the crisis to develop. Ymel posted:Ι searched for the data on this and there are 1,473 cases of dead people whose relatives or the postman are receiving their pensions. There are 8,500 cases of people above 90 receiving a pension and they are still searching how many of those are alive. So I fail to see how 100,000 are 'cheating' the system. Not being registered is not the same as cheating. Let's say, it is a very good hint. I read about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, but unfortunately not online. You will have to endure the Daily Mail for an English online version: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048385/Greek-finance-sham-120k-families-claiming-ghost-pensions.html and http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_2_07/10/2011_409786 quote:You are correct that tax evasion is rife. But think about it like that. Even if say 500,000 people are cheating the system, that's still 5% of the people. Hell, let's make it 20%. Why should the 80% of the rest pay As I said above: How the Greeks get their state running is their business (as long as within the rules of the European Human Rights). To add to your questions: Why should the other European taxpayer come up for the Greek tax frauds? quote:Greek government spending is 46% of GDP (with the newest revisions), which is approximately in line (a little bigger) with the rest of the EU. There's either too many people working for peanuts, there is no welfare state or there's few people getting rich salaries. Your scenario of tons of people getting crazy money is arithmetically impossible. It's definitely inefficient, but not as terribly large as people make it out to be. The Greek state is however not collecting enough money and its revenues as % of GDP are substantially lower than the rest of the EU. Again, there are people who cheated the tax system and that's correct, but the biggest tax evaders are lawyers, doctors etc. i.e. the rich. So a teacher in the public sector isn't happy to see his salary halved but he has to get hosed because somebody else cheated on taxes? Not collecting enough money is systemic: On top of the tax fraud taxes are very low and there used to be a high income tax allowance (12000 Euros I think). This is way above German levels and everybody - the poor teacher included - used to profit from low taxes and high allowances. There's no need for cheating to explain a low level of income. And I frankly don't believe Greek numbers anymore. They didn't even know the number of their civil servants before the crisis, so how should they know how much they are spending on the public sector? quote:Siemens gets a cheap loan, installs traffic system in Greece, pockets a hefty premium for bribing 10 officials and then gets the advantage of paying peanut wages too. Noone doubts their integrity because they are Germans and 'these things don't happen there'. The financial system put money where capital was scarce and got hefty returns for it. Siemens made billions and billions by bribing every official they stumbled upon. The people who financed Siemens also got their slice, even if they got burnt later on with bonds. Why don't you ask Siemens to pay instead of Johannes? Why should Johannes or Siemens pay for a traffic system installed in Greece for the benefit of Ioannis? Greece isn't a mentally handicapped minor who wasn't allowed to do business, but a sovereign and democratic state. If they signed contracts, it's foremost their problem. If they are a corrupt and failed state: That's another of Greece's problems to solve. I think the rioters should concentrate their anger on their society and how things work as a whole and not on a few that happen to be convenient scapegoats. quote:The fact remains that the mean, median and any other metric of salary is lower in Greece than most states in the EU. It doesn't help to compare Greece to other states if you want to see whether they are leaving beyond their means. As of Summer 2011 the Greek purchasing power was around 90% of EU average. How high was it in 1990? And what did the Greeks do in terms of productivity to earn 90% of purchasing power? http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/gdp-based-on-purchasing-power-parity-ppp-per-capita-gdp-imf-data.html quote:Yes, that's the core of the problem. Instead of Germany inflating its economy to balance fiscal and current account balances, the government decided to gently caress its workers over. The result was bigger profits for German companies and due to the Euro, easier access to capital starving economies where they made higher returns. All of this would have never happened if German wages kept rising with productivity. Instead German governments' metaphysical faith in austerity is leading Europe to ruin. Wages are negotiated between unions and employers, the state doesn't play a big role in Germany. German wages were quite high until the early 2000s and they have done the sensible thing: Not increase them until they were competitive again. The result is a loss in purchasing power but an increase in employment. Of course, it is unpopular to be a ant in a cricket's world. The anger directed at German self-restraint is sublimed anger towards the own shortsighted spendthrift that led into disaster. quote:Greek wages are back to 1983 levels. Everything they gained from the EU has been lost. Sure, austerity had to happen to some degree. But what is happening is the extermination of a people. The least bad thing for everyone is a bailout. But if everyone else is finding this reprehensible, the only correct moral stance of any Greek government is immediate obligatory default, not lead its people to the slaughter. I do not believe the 1983 levels. Do you have a link to support it? And, yeah "extermination of a people". Ridiculous hyperbole is not going to help. A bail out is only going to happen if Greece changes the rotten way its society works because else they will have to be bailed out on a regular basis. And no, this won't be done with a few commie rioters yelling "ze rich are taking ar jerbs".
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Oct 20, 2011 09:42
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dreamin' posted:Einbauschrank, how can you argue in one post that Ioannis is earning 3500€ for the same job that a worker in Germany earns 2200€, and when it's shown to you that it's total bullshit, counter with "but the taxes are lower and they all cheat!" without blushing? I am a little bit fed up with the lack of manners in this debate. 1. It wasn't disproved that Ioannis could earn 3500€ for a job that would earn Johannes 2200€. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,770889,00.html 2. The taxes *are* lower and I didn't say they all cheat. I even posted earlier - quite explicitly - hat I don't think they all cheat. Please: Stop lying. I took care to post "I don't say that every Greek is corrupt". I am fed up with this. I don't put words into your mouth that you never said, I use the "quote" function and try to argue with what the other person said instead of inventing fairy tales which I then refute. So please, show some courtesy, even if we happen to disagree.
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Oct 20, 2011 09:54
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hankor posted:The people in the street also hate living near mosques and want the death penalty for child molesters, the people in the streets are the bloodthirsty mob that starts lynching witches whenever the harvest fails. So perhaps we should abolish democracy and install a well meaning technocratic dictatorship? I mean the people don't know what's good for them anyway, except enlightened beings like you of course. Who are you to think, that you are better than the "street", so you can judge about it?
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Oct 20, 2011 11:21
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DeusEx posted:So perhaps we should abolish democracy and install a well meaning technocratic dictatorship? I mean the people don't know what's good for them anyway, except enlightened beings like you of course. I missed the point where I claimed to be the second coming of Saint Demokratius, all knowing political analyst and potent lover of myriads of economically challenged housewifes. I'm as much a misinformed asshead as you, Einbauschrank or any other member of the general public. My point is that whenever people bring up the Volksabstimmung or similar instruments I remember those nice little stickers I see on VW Beetles in favor of the death penalty, I remember the Bayernpartei and I remember the wonderful way the people screamed for blood in the beginning of the Kachelmannprozess. hankor fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Oct 20, 2011 |
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Oct 20, 2011 12:25
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Einbauschrank posted:Let's say, it is a very good hint. Einbauschrank posted:As I said above: How the Greeks get their state running is their business (as long as within the rules of the European Human Rights). To add to your questions: Why should the other European taxpayer come up for the Greek tax frauds? They shouldn't unless they think (like I do) that it is the case with the best outcomes. But in case they don't, the Greeks should default. Loans have interests because they are risky and sometimes risks don't pay out. It's partially a case of fiscal profligacy but more than that it's an economic case of sudden stop of capital flows. See http://streetlightblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-really-caused-eurozone-crisis-part.html as well as other economists who think in similar lines. The crisis is caused by participation in the euro. If Greece wasn't in the euro it could devalue and everything would adjust around that. They would become poorer, but not 30-40% poorer and the other countries would bear part of the cost as well instead of demanding Greece to bear the burden of adjusting the whole Eurozone. Einbauschrank posted:Not collecting enough money is systemic: On top of the tax fraud taxes are very low and there used to be a high income tax allowance (12000 Euros I think). This is way above German levels and everybody - the poor teacher included - used to profit from low taxes and high allowances. There's no need for cheating to explain a low level of income. And I frankly don't believe Greek numbers anymore. They didn't even know the number of their civil servants before the crisis, so how should they know how much they are spending on the public sector? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe Corporate tax is higher, income taxes are higher, VAT is higher. How did people who could not cheat the tax system like employees of companies benefit from it exactly? Not collecting enough money is systemic, but only certain people benefited from it and within those people some benefited disproportionally. The other shouldn't have to suffer for it and this is exactly what is happening . Greek numbers are confirmed and checked by Eurostat now on a constant basis. Wouldn't you think that if they still cooked numbers up they would rather show at least a small reduction in government spending? Instead all reports show that government spending has remained unchanged throughout the crisis (because automatic stabilizers means that cutting jobs in the public sector and elsewhere just shows up as pension fund holes, unemployment benefits and early pensions). Einbauschrank posted:Why should Johannes or Siemens pay for a traffic system installed in Greece for the benefit of Ioannis? Greece isn't a mentally handicapped minor who wasn't allowed to do business, but a sovereign and democratic state. If they signed contracts, it's foremost their problem. If they are a corrupt and failed state: That's another of Greece's problems to solve. I think the rioters should concentrate their anger on their society and how things work as a whole and not on a few that happen to be convenient scapegoats. I don't think you get how states work. States can repudiate contracts and obligations as they please. They might lose in credibility, but they are not bound by anyone not to do it physically. If a contract is signed based on people receiving and offering bribes then there's even good moral ground to say that this contract should be considered void and null. And furthermore rioters do concentrate their anger on the workings of the state. No one there thinks all was well and somebody came to ruin their party. But no one thinks that the proposed measures are anything other than implemented for the dubious moral satisfaction of outraged people like you. Cutting someone's wages by 50% is not going to help in any form to battle corruption. Einbauschrank posted:It doesn't help to compare Greece to other states if you want to see whether they are leaving beyond their means. As of Summer 2011 the Greek purchasing power was around 90% of EU average. How high was it in 1990? And what did the Greeks do in terms of productivity to earn 90% of purchasing power? Yes, apart from the fact that Greece is an extremely unequal country so average wages are not instructive. Median wages are more appropriate and it's only 75% of Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income. Again, the central issue is an issue of justice. Why should the people living on wages of 800 € when the rent is 400 have to pay for the rest? You can blablabla about systemic causes but there is no acceptable moral answer to this issue. What you are basically suggesting is that poorer people should become poorer and richer should become richer. I let other people think if this is a position they would like to support. This is why people attack you, because they think you are holding an untenable moral position. You could say that the same is true of Angola let's say, but Angola is not tied to the euro straight-jacket with Germany. If it feels Germany is suppressing its wages it can devalue against it. There's no 3 ways about it. Either Greece is allowed to default and devalue or Germany increases its wages or Germany bails out Greece. These are the options. German restraint is all good and stuff if that's what the German people choose as long as they do not force everyone to follow them into their race to the bottom. But I doubt whether it's truly what people want and I doubt whether the German government is not using every ounce of pressure it has to keep Greece from defaulting until it's fully prepared for it. Einbauschrank posted:I do not believe the 1983 levels. Do you have a link to support it? And, yeah "extermination of a people". Ridiculous hyperbole is not going to help. Yeh, hyperbole, apart from: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_08/07/2011_397586 http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_15/09/2011_406609 This is the list of 'adjustments': http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13940431 Unemployment is 16.5%. Youth unemployment is 40%+. They work the most hours in Europe and get a below average pay that is only getting worse. What future is there for them? They don't want to be bailed out necessarily, they want the Government which has no democratic legitimacy anymore to go so that a different solution is found. I don't think anyone debates that Greeks will become poorer and governmental structures will change. The questions are who and by how much and whether the old system will pay. They know there is no way out of default. But there is negotiation about it (disclosure: I can't find the article about wage levels, but see the bbc one for proposed wage cuts which are on top of last year's wage cuts). Ymel fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Oct 20, 2011 |
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Oct 20, 2011 13:11
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DeusEx posted:So perhaps we should abolish democracy and install a well meaning technocratic dictatorship? That's a false dichotomy and you know it. Let's not do that and instead have a democratic system with separation of powers, checks and balances and a constitution that guarantees certain inalienable rights that cannot be overruled by the will of the majority. Luckily, we already have that and if we didn't we would probably have such wonderful things like the Minarettverbot in Switzerland.
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Oct 20, 2011 16:01
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futurebot 2000 posted:That's a false dichotomy and you know it. Let's not do that and instead have a democratic system with separation of powers, checks and balances and a constitution that guarantees certain inalienable rights that cannot be overruled by the will of the majority. Luckily, we already have that and if we didn't we would probably have such wonderful things like the Minarettverbot in Switzerland. The problem is that the parliamentarian system has been warped by lobbied interest groups. I don't think that the Merkels and Steinbrücks are evil villains conspiring to to exploit the common people, but by being powerful people that converse with other powerful people, they are with time more and more inclined to positively consider the "suggestions" put forward by these groups. It's more a social phenomenon, than one of outright corruption, but one that these lobby groups know to effectively put in use for their own goals. When Merkel hosts a birthday party for Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, it's much less an issue of wasted tax payer money, but more one of having too close ties with a powerful interest group. I think that there should be a system in place, that allows that allows the general public to overrule parliamentarian decisions if more than 50% of the electorate (that means of the people eligible to vote, not just 50% of those who participate in the vote), vote so. The logistics of this shouldn't be a problem in the days of ubiquitous internet access, if one would really want to realize such a system. DeusEx fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Oct 20, 2011 |
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Oct 20, 2011 18:57
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Ymel posted:Ι searched for the data on this and there are 1,473 cases of dead people whose relatives or the postman are receiving their pensions. There are 8,500 cases of people above 90 receiving a pension and they are still searching how many of those are alive. So I fail to see how 100,000 are 'cheating' the system. Not being registered is not the same as cheating. The Chief of IKA, the Greek pension insurance, speaks of up to 8 billions that have been siphoned away by frauds. http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_7_31/10/2011_412494 Argue with him about it being only 1473 cases.
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Oct 31, 2011 18:09
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This thread has been very quiet for the last couple of weeks, surprisingly. I was hoping some of you fine gentlemen could point me to some information about the Right Terror that has been the focus of discussion for a while now. I feel like I didn't pay attention for a minute, and the next thing I know there is a Neo-Nazi terrorist network making the news and talks about outlawing the NPD again. I feel like the NPD Verbots-discussions, while being a good thing for bringing up what a horrible, terrible party this is, are some kind of a kneejerk reaction, but I seemed to have missed what it is a kneejerk reaction to. I was hoping for some information from this thread, kind goons.
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Nov 19, 2011 11:35
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If neonazis in Germany commit a hate crime it's not a hate crime.
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Nov 19, 2011 12:13
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Grendels Dad posted:This thread has been very quiet for the last couple of weeks, surprisingly. I was hoping some of you fine gentlemen could point me to some information about the Right Terror that has been the focus of discussion for a while now. I feel like I didn't pay attention for a minute, and the next thing I know there is a Neo-Nazi terrorist network making the news and talks about outlawing the NPD again. The SPIEGEL has a decent writeup: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,797569,00.html But yeah, the whole thing came a bit as a bolt from the blue, so to speak. At least the domestic intelligence services seem to have grossly underestimated the right wing extremist scene. Even uglier are the implications that the same services might have known about the cell well in advance or may even have covered them. The NPD thing, I believe, is more because the party has changed its strategy away from being ultra-extremist to at least appearing somewhat mainstream - they are no longer running around with quite as many Imperial German Flags and more with Federal German Flags, for example. And they managed to retain their seats in at least one of the state parliaments (here in MV, go figure), so there is fear that they may become a fixture in the German political spectrum. The involvement of the domestic intelligence service and the ideological component aside, I see no connection between the NPD and the NSU.
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Nov 19, 2011 16:43
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ArchangeI posted:The SPIEGEL has a decent writeup: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,797569,00.html Thank you, going to have a look at that right away. quote:The NPD thing, I believe, is more because the party has changed its strategy away from being ultra-extremist to at least appearing somewhat mainstream - they are no longer running around with quite as many Imperial German Flags and more with Federal German Flags, for example. And they managed to retain their seats in at least one of the state parliaments (here in MV, go figure), so there is fear that they may become a fixture in the German political spectrum. The involvement of the domestic intelligence service and the ideological component aside, I see no connection between the NPD and the NSU. It's pure speculation, but would you say that the course of this change in politics could be partly due to the fact that the NPD is teeming with these V-Männern? I got the general impression that the NPD would cease to be able to function as a party if all the confidential informants of the domestic intelligence just up and left. Edit: Never mind, reading the article this seems the same kind of careless underestimation of the right that has allowed this NSU to operate for so long. Grendels Dad fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Nov 19, 2011 |
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Nov 19, 2011 16:54
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Grendels Dad posted:It's pure speculation, but would you say that the course of this change in politics could be partly due to the fact that the NPD is teeming with these V-Männern? I got the general impression that the NPD would cease to be able to function as a party if all the confidential informants of the domestic intelligence just up and left. V-männer are neonazis who get paid for passing on information to the Verfassungsschutz. There's evidence quite a few of them only join the program to collect a paycheck from the government while still supporting the NPD, in some cases with the very money they earn from being V-männer. So it's highly unlikely all of them would just up and leave.
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Nov 20, 2011 09:18
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Ententod posted:V-männer are neonazis who get paid for passing on information to the Verfassungsschutz. There's evidence quite a few of them only join the program to collect a paycheck from the government while still supporting the NPD, in some cases with the very money they earn from being V-männer. So it's highly unlikely all of them would just up and leave. This is important. V-männer are not goverment spies inserted into an organization, they were in the organization in the first place and call their handler once a month to tell them what is going on.
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Nov 20, 2011 12:39
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ArchangeI posted:This is important. V-männer are not goverment spies inserted into an organization, they were in the organization in the first place and call their handler once a month to tell them what is going on. I'm somewhat confused now, wasn't there a scandal several years ago when an investigation or abolition-process went south because the government had operatives in the organisation that had actively participated in legal transgressions. Were those not V-Männer then but actual undercover operatives?
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Nov 20, 2011 12:47
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Stuhlmajor posted:I'm somewhat confused now, wasn't there a scandal several years ago when an investigation or abolition-process went south because the government had operatives in the organisation that had actively participated in legal transgressions. Yeah, this confuses me too. The bit about V-Männer basically being government-funded Neo-Nazis sounds pretty bad, but from what I've read I had the impression a sizable part of them actually were government spies and since there were so many of them in the NPD it couldn't be banned.
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Nov 20, 2011 12:50
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Grendels Dad posted:Yeah, this confuses me too. The bit about V-Männer basically being government-funded Neo-Nazis sounds pretty bad, but from what I've read I had the impression a sizable part of them actually were government spies and since there were so many of them in the NPD it couldn't be banned. It doesn't just sound bad, it is actually that bad. The number of V-Männer shouldn't have prevented the abolition of the NPD. But the right wing extremists can always count on the support of their friends in the judicial branch. A very good episode of Spaß 5 on this topic: http://medien.wdr.de/m/1321546735/radio/spass5/wdr5_spass5_20111117_2330.mp3 Hungry Gerbil fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Nov 20, 2011 |
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Nov 20, 2011 14:08
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