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Greek police clash with anti-austerity protesters

By "destructive" do you mean social programs that try to help ordinary people instead of giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans?

Destructive in the sense that many of the members of your generation will be forced to accept a lower standard of living. Many of your cohort will never own their own homes. Their educations will not pay off as they had hoped. They will remember the age of affluence as they experience an era of diminished opportunities and prospects.
 
Hardly....Let's see, 30 years ago I was 18 yrs old and barely even concerned with politics. But I think if you were to do an honest assessment of spending in this country liberals far outweigh the destructive spending that has gone on.

Its funny how you think thats a reasonable arguement but all you're doing is changing the subject. If someone says "the right has spent like crazy as well" and you say "well the left has spent more" you aren't actually addressing the original point. Regardless of what the left has done spending wise there's no denying that both sides have spent far too much, so all you're saying with you're argument is that both sides are to blame.

In other words, one murderer saying to another "I killed less people than you" doesn't make him any less of a murderer. And a politician who says "well I spent less in deficit than you" doesn't change what he did.
 
Dont worry.. American's dont have the balls to demonstrate against the government. Not to mention the US has not cut spending in generations.... And for the record.. the Greeks got into this trouble thanks to a right wing government.. UPS!

if America was a race, this post would = racism

but it isn't, so this is just bigotry.
 
No it is factual. Not my fault you are ashamed of your countrymen's lack of political action.

pure bigotry.

We are a huge nation, one with a history of directly challenging government

you are just a hater that can't see straight. pathetic really
 
Regardless if it is violent protest or a peaceful protest it still looks like spoiled rotten ungrateful children throwing a tantrum.

How so? The Greek people were lied to for a decade by right wing governments and are now being asked to pay for the miss-deads of said government while the bankers, who helped the right wing government with the debt building go scot free...... I would be royally pissed if that happened in Denmark. Hell I am wondering why American's are not out demanding the heads of their bankers and financial institutions since it was their fault in large part that the US is in the hole it is in now... but what happens instead.. nothing, business as usual and you are pushing the problem ahead of you for now. Zero protests by Americans..and no the Tea Party movement is not a protest movement.. it is a new right wing movement with the same old tired ideas that only want one thing.. power and money.. solutions come last.

Most protest in Europe are bound to the fact that the governments that are putting in austerity measures (unlike in the US) are more than often targeting the middle and less well off instead of the banks and the rich. Take the UK changes in the university tuition.. it has long been a conservative idea, and does nothing what so ever to help the less well off gaining a higher education. It basically will make the UK "dumber" and expand yet again the class divides that have been shrinking for generations.

The only positive thing I can say about the European politicians that lead us into the situation, is that many of them admit their wrong doing and do want to target the banking industry. The Irish have banned bonuses in their banks for now.. good for them.
 
Nobody should like austerity, seeing as how it is the economic elite's way of getting the poor to pay for their f-ups.

Well one would expect so after the poor lent billions of dollars to people who couldn't pay it back, then got billion of dollars in bailouts from the taxpayer whereas support for the banks was cut on a huge scale. Despite the fact that the poor pay little or no taxes due to their use of ofshore tax havens .......No wait it was the other way round
 
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This is what happens when you allow yourself to be dependent on the government.

Remember the folks that thought Obama was going to buy them a house? This mentality is real out there.
 


No one has the right to make you more me pay for their most or all of their education,health care or retirement. Taxes at most should fund he basics like infrastructure, military, law enforcement, at most k-12 education, and a few other things. So that eurotrash college kid should be extremely grateful that others are helping to pay for part of his college,health care or other **** instead of acting like typical eurotrash acting like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.




The Greek people were lied to for a decade by right wing governments and are now being asked to pay for the miss-deads of said government while the bankers, who helped the right wing government with the debt building go scot free...... I would be royally pissed if that happened in Denmark.


Regardless of how that government got into debt, no one owes anyone a free or a reduced education,free health or early retirement.

Hell I am wondering why American's are not out demanding the heads of their bankers and financial institutions since it was their fault in large part that the US is in the hole it is in now.

I believe a lot of Americans including myself were against the bail outs due to the fact a business should fail or succeed on its own with little government interference.



but what happens instead.
Politicians who claimed to be capitalists supported the bailouts.

Most protest in Europe are bound to the fact that the governments that are putting in austerity measures (unlike in the US) are more than often targeting the middle and less well off instead of the banks and the rich.

Don't the rich pay for their own education,health care and own retirement? And isn't it the rich that paying for you to have those things?


The only positive thing I can say about the European politicians that lead us into the situation, is that many of them admit their wrong doing and do want to target the banking industry. The Irish have banned bonuses in their banks for now.. good for them.

In America we do not believe in limiting how much a company may pay someone.
 
This is what happens when you allow yourself to be dependent on the government.

Remember the folks that thought Obama was going to buy them a house? This mentality is real out there.

Was the Greek welfare system even that generous? I would be interested to here your analysis of it
 
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Dont worry.. American's dont have the balls to demonstrate against the government. Not to mention the US has not cut spending in generations.... And for the record.. the Greeks got into this trouble thanks to a right wing government.. UPS!

I don't agree with this.

A lot of people in a protest like this are young people that don't know any better or even know why they are there.

They have nothing better to do and they want to be part of something.

I can see it happening in the US as well.
 
Hardly....Let's see, 30 years ago I was 18 yrs old and barely even concerned with politics. But I think if you were to do an honest assessment of spending in this country liberals far outweigh the destructive spending that has gone on.


j-mac

That's not obvious from following the votes. For example, Medicare has always been a bipartisan program. Nobody wants it on their portfolio that they voted against old people. Sentimental culture, plus old people are a large voting demographic.

There's not a single truly costly program that can be attributed entirely to liberals.
 
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There's not a single truly costly program that can be attributed entirely to liberals.

it's true that social security and medicare, as well as lbj's civil rights act, enjoyed substantial gop support

it is obama's failure that he resorted to cramming his obamacare, using senate reconciliation, you recall, commonly called the nuke option

while it may be true that those earlier mega-reforms are not entirely the responsibility of liberals, it may be fair to attribute them all to liberalism

why run away from em, just because obama's own debt commission called out their need for MASSIVE repair?

germany shows the way, the only way out (from the reuters link above):

By the time Germany passed its Agenda 2010 reform package in 2003, the country had been suffering from double-digit unemployment and mostly anemic growth for a decade. The reforms included draconian cuts in pensions and unemployment benefits, increased labor flexibility and wage cuts.

Harm Bandholz's Munich-based colleague Andreas Rees is UniCredit's chief German economist and says that the country's road to recovery from being the "sick man of Europe" has been anything but easy.

"The road to higher GDP growth was long and hard," he said. "It involved cutting wage costs for about 10 years and consumer expenditures have simply been a disaster."

"We've been through massive uncertainty and for many Germans it was a really painful period."

The reforms also resulted in the formation of the new Left socialist party, altering Germany's political landscape.

But thanks to the country's more flexible work force and "also partly good luck" in the form of demand from China for quality manufactured products, Rees said the "reforms have clearly paid off."

Driven by its manufacturing sector, the German economy is expected to grow by anywhere up to 3.7 percent in 2010, while unemployment fell to an 18-year low of 7.5 percent in October. Rees said he is upbeat about future consumer spending. But even seven years after reforms began, Rees said they are not over.
 
Get the popcorn folk, these are coming attractions on its way to a city in the US near you.




Looks fun eh?


















































































j-mac


That looks like what would happen if you fed a pack of wolves instead of letting them hunt for themselves. They'd breed and the offspring wouldn't know how to hunt either. When the food runs out, of course they are going attack. They don't know how to do anything else.
The sad part is, the food is gone and attacking doesn't solve anything.
 
Nobody should like austerity, seeing as how it is the economic elite's way of getting the poor to pay for their f-ups.

And part of that's because the government's been ever-increasing the load on upper-middle and higher income individuals to the point where their backs are literally broken. No government can sustain robbing from the rich to serve the poor indefinitely. Ya' gots ta' git a job.
 
this afternoon: EU Endorses Bailout Fund, Amid Discord - WSJ.com

[T]he crisis gripping the weaker governments of the euro zone showed no signs of abating. On Thursday, Spain was forced to offer significantly higher interest rates at a debt auction Thursday than it paid just a month ago. Bond markets fell across Europe. Earlier on Thursday, the head of the International Monetary Fund said he's worried European officials are "too much behind the curve" in comparison with the speed at which markets are moving, risking further contagion in the euro area.

Also Thursday, the European Central bank said it will nearly double its capital base—a move analysts see as a strong signal to government leaders that the central bank's loans to banks and its purchases of government bonds of the region's weakest economies carry a risk. There were no details about the size of the new fund, which finance ministers said last month would be broadly in line with the EU's current temporary €750 billion ($992 billion) fund.

So far, the expected agreement on the new bailout plan, which includes provisions that would force holders of euro-zone government bonds to bear losses in some cases, has done little to reassure markets about Europe's resolve to salvage its common currency. In recent days, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and other leaders have proposed issuing common euro bonds as a way to alleviate the pressure on the currency area's weakest members. But the idea has been met with fierce resistance in Germany and other countries amid concerns that they could end up footing the bill for profligate neighbors.

The Continent's inability so far to halt the spread of the turmoil bodes ill for the coming year, when EU countries are expected to need to raise $2 trillion of debt. If Europe's governments fail to put their bickering aside, they risk triggering the unthinkable: the implosion of the euro.

For the past year, Europe has sought to manage the crisis with stopgap measures. Now, with Greece and Ireland under the virtual stewardship of the EU and the IMF and Portugal threatened with a similar fate, there is a growing recognition across Europe that policy makers are running out of options. Spain, a far larger economy than Ireland or Greece, is in jeopardy due in part to unknown losses in its banking system as its housing bubble deflates. Even Italy and Belgium, long used to managing high public debts, are coming under pressure in bond markets.

who's spinning?
 
My only hope is that the violence in these countries increases until the measures are reversed in their entirety, or until the governments are overthrown.

Whichever comes first.
 
My only hope is that the violence in these countries increases until the measures are reversed in their entirety, or until the governments are overthrown.

Whichever comes first.

Violence won't change the nature of reality. Those workers are in direct competition with Chinese and Indian workers. Big govt. can't be sustained and it can't be reformed.
 
Violence won't change the nature of reality. Those workers are in direct competition with Chinese and Indian workers. Big govt. can't be sustained and it can't be reformed.
These measures are very obviously the way of the wealthy punishing the poor for their ****ups. The Greeks and Brits are entitled to use any means necessary to overturn them.
 
These measures are very obviously the way of the wealthy punishing the poor for their ****ups. The Greeks and Brits are entitled to use any means necessary to overturn them.

The Greeks and Brits can't prevent the decline in their standard of living. That's what happens when power shifts in the world. There is nothing they can do to save themselves no matter who they kill. It's too late. Their countries are past the tipping point.
 
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