As Greece falls in arrears, one man wants to crowdfund €1.6 billion payment

British campaign organizer: “Right come on guys, let's just get this shit sorted.”

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[coslie]

bluesdrivemonster[/url]":28qk4cx5]How true is it that the current PM of Greece won't impose higher taxes on the upper class of Greece to get them out of this mess? And would that even help a lot?

Not even a little true. The current leadership want to crack down in tax evasion. They also offered to defer military spending. However the IMF and company want to dictate cuts to social spending and an increase to taxes that will fall heavily on the poor.

 

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ZhanMing057[/url]":2tg7o94h]

jandrese[/url]":2tg7o94h]It is a well known fact that the worst way out of a financial crisis is austerity. It's like losing your job so you sell your car and then have no way to get to a new job. Yes, I managed to squeeze in a car analogy, that's how internet I am.

It is a well-known fact to, well, people who don't know much about economics.

You've got that exactly backwards. And the economists who still cling to austerity are the type that consistently ignore empirical evidence.

 

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JPan[/url]":3iiey54p]

coslie[/url]":3iiey54p]

bluesdrivemonster[/url]":3iiey54p]How true is it that the current PM of Greece won't impose higher taxes on the upper class of Greece to get them out of this mess? And would that even help a lot?

Not even a little true. The current leadership want to crack down in tax evasion. They also offered to defer military spending. However the IMF and company want to dictate cuts to social spending and an increase to taxes that will fall heavily on the poor.

Bullshit. The current government was willing to increase taxes on pretty much everybody. Problem is that this does not fix their economic problems. What they need to do is open labour laws and stop early pensioning. Because getting more people to work is essential for it to work out. And yes there were some cuts as well they are running out of money quickly because nobody trusts them anymore.
But especially the IMF wasn't content with that they wanted them to do actual structural reforms that would help the economy to get better in the long run. You know the kind of stuff Spain did which was really painful but now led to them being the fastest growing country in Europe. Still early days but ...

The problem is that this runs anathema to the politics of the current government they are a radical left party who
- reversed privatisations ( they can be bad but the public sector in Greece is so terrible that this is necessary
- stopped opening the labour market ( which is key to get the country back up )
- rehired state employees ( the one thing they need to reduce because a lot of them are just dead weight )

This policy of very strict labour laws and a still very big public sector leads to the fact that greek labour costs are still as high as in 2007 and the whole country is not competitive but lots of people are out of work. With a drachma they could deflate their currency but without it they need reforms. And the current government is completely opposed to them.

Hell Greece still doesn't have a land register. They got 150m from the EU a couple years back which resulted in nothing and the minister in charge said " Well this is Greece".

Or the other Syriza guy who just said regarding pensioners not getting their pension " Money is only paper, it will be found"

So basically the problem is not the money. The problem is that this was a country heavily living over its possibilities and now being ruled by a bunch of guys who think money is just paper. They take their democratic right not to implement the proposed reforms and the rest of Europe takes their democratic right not to give them anymore money.

And yes their debt is unsustainable in the long run but they only have to pay less as percentage of GDP now than France because the interest rates are so low. The problem is that while Spain,Portugal, Estonia, Ireland, Slowakia etc. reformed a lot Greece did not. Don't get me wrong they cut a lot but they didn't make any reforms that would actually make the country work better.

And the biggest problem is that nobody trusts the new government anymore. They always talk about the things they want to reform but they have done jackshit. They had 6 months now they could have heavily done some of the reforms that make sense to everybody. There is enough to do. But the only thing they produce is hot air. First they need to reform THEN the debt can be cut. Not the other way round.

Syriza aren't radical, unless not obeying the IMF is radical. The IMF are right wing ideologues with the same toxic prescription for everything. They've consistently used crisis to impose their agenda, with no regard as to whether or not it works, or if they are making things better or worse.

Greece isn't particularly efficient, and never should've been let in. (Thanks Goldman Sachs) They probably ought to leave. But they are far from the only guilty party in all this, and as usual it's the wrong people being made to suffer.