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- Dec 20, 2009
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- Conservative
LOL it is poor governance lol.. seriously have you even followed what went wrong? The Conservative Greek government LIED to the world including their own people and American banks and financial institutions helped them in hiding the truth.. that their deficit was much larger than reported and they had off the books debt .. thanks to J.P. Morgan and Co.
:shrug: if the greek government lied, then that is on them. but that doesn't alter the fact that the reason they had to lie fundamentally comes down to the fact that they have too many people drawing off the system, and too few people paying in.
Again you have zero understanding of the situation. Countries will always have debt.... even China has over 30% debt... You can not run a country without debt, just as you cant run a company without debt.
sure you can - America has been debt free times as have plenty of nations.
however, again, the fact that they have debt is not as important as the amount of debt they have racked up trying to make up for the fact that their demographics are skewed.
pay-as-you-go retirement only works when you continue to have significantly more workers than retirees; which means that if you are going to retire your populace at 55 and watch them spend the next 25 years drawing on the system, you need them to have had a lot of kids back when they were in their twenties. Instead, most Greeks couples had 1 kid.
Now Greece committed fraud, pure and simple and will ultimately pay for said fraud. It was the political elite (mostly right wing) and the banking sector that committed said fraud and not the Greek people and that is why the Greek people are rebelling against the sitting socialist government that is trying to fix the problem.
:lol: there is no right wing government in Greece. there is only left wing and slightly-less-left-wing. and the greek people are rebelling because their easy lives with early retirements and late studenthoods is going away. honestly people, if you're a "student" until you're 27, and then you plan on retiring at 55; guess what? you're not working long enough to pay for either of those things.
The other countries in Europe also have debt.. but unsustainable? With the exception of Ireland and maybe Portugal, hell no.
it's not about the debt - the debt is just a symptom. it's about the demographics.
So freaking what if Italy has 125% debt vs GDP? They have had it before and frankly have not been under 80% for many many many decades. That debt is majority owned by... the Italian people! Italy is a massive economy, one of the worlds biggest exporters and has a ton of potential considering the structural problems hampering growth. Fix those problems and watch Italy go.
except that you won't because Italy's vital workforce is now living at home with mom and dad until their 30's, and there aren't even enough of those. you need a fertility rate of 2.1 to replace your populace - and no people have ever come back after dipping below a fertility rate of 1.8. Italy's fertility rate is 1.3.
Now I ask you this.. what countries other than Greece, Ireland and Portugal, have "debt problems"? France? Germany? UK? Denmark? Belgium? Holland? Austria? which ones?
take a look for yourself
You and your ****ing entitlement ****. It is a load of horse crap that is deflecting away from the real reasons.... lax tax collecting. You cant cut your way out of a problem like this (and the US deficit problems) but need to up your income.
you are correct that you need to increase income - though i'm not sure you know how to do it. however, the fact remains that, like the United States, Greece cannot tax it's way to paying for itself. when you are taxing three workers to pay for two retirees and one student; bluntly, the system is unstable, and you've created a tragedy of the commons where everyones' incentive is to get out. try to punitively tax those workers, and they will simply leave faster, and you will be worse off than you were before.
And in Greece's case, the tax collecting system is pathetic and can be compared to Somalia's. But as long as the Greek people are royally pissed at the political elite and the bankers, then they will not cooperate one bit in fixing their economy as long as it is the "usual suspects" running the show.
the greek people will continue to protest about how it's the evil bankers and whomever else no matter what "the political elite" do - its in their interest to blame someone else, and seek to place the pain on someone else.
NO European will ever vote in anyone that wants to turn their country into the heartless ME society like the USA. Yes we want our UHC, and pension systems and so on and are willing to pay for it and do pay for it.
Greek rioters seem to disagree.
So answer me... why is it suddenly a problem?
it's not - this train wreck has been building for decades. and is still building in plenty of other nations, including the US.