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Free-As-In-Beer Electricity In Greece?
PolygamousRanchKid writes New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will lay out his radical left-wing government's policies in a speech later on Sunday, firmly rejecting any more austerity forced on his debt-strapped country by its euro zone partners. In his first major speech to parliament as premier, Tsipras is expected to say that Greece wants no more bailout money, plans to renegotiate its debt deal and wants a "bridge agreement" to tide the country over until a new pact is sealed. A second part of the speech will touch on his government's social and fiscal policy over the longer term and is likely to repeat pledges for such things as a rise in the minimum wage and free electricity for poorer Greeks. Which gets me to thinking: with free electricity, wouldn't that be a great business opportunity, to build a cloud of servers in poorer Greeks' basements? Maybe that is the real plan behind the free electricity idea.
I could see people starting to mine Bitcoin as well as other shitcoins a whole lot in Greece should this come into effect.
It's somewhat true that there's a bell curve in taxation, peaking with the middle class.
1) The poor have nothing to tax. They are generally on welfare or just off it, and struggling. The "freebies" a la "welfare" is not so much about the welfare receiving parents as giving their kids a chance to break out of the poverty trap, which they can't do if undernourished or uneducated.
2) The middle class has something to tax, but don't have the resources to defend themselves adequately. This is where the peak begins.
3) The upper middle class has a lot to tax, and is just starting to have enough resources to start to defend themselves, This is where the taxation peak starts to drop. (pretty much: between the 2% and the 0.5%)
3) The super wealthy hold all the cards. They can hire legions of lawyers and bankrupt countries if need be. This category controls or directly owns 50% of the world's wealth. Taxation doesn't even make sense to this class.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Is electricity "stuff"? Or does it enable the use of stuff?
Anyway, I don't think they've looked far enough east for inspiration. I remember reading a few years ago that in one of the south-east Asian cities (Kuala Lumpur maybe? Singapore?) there was two-tier pricing on electricity -- dirt cheap up to X kWh so that everyone could have lighting and basic usage, but then ramping up to very expensive so that the rich buggers running air conditioning all day long were effectively subsidising the poor.
Although, on reflection, that's not really a solution for Greece seeing as it's not a matter of a large wealth gap as a severe lack of wealth....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
why do rich and poor people always get things for "free"???
Strange how the people who make these kind of claims are never willing to live in poverty to get "free stuff"?
They do. There is a whole sub-class (in the UK anyway) who don't bother to get a job in order to qualify for hand-outs.
That's what always cracks me up about the arguments made for or against a form of monetary policy, people argue against a fringe extreme without actually looking at what the goal is.
Very few conservatives argue for the complete abolition of all social services and safety-nets such that everyone literally is on their own. Sure, some do, but not the majority.
Very few liberals argue for the complete abolition of corporations and the ability to accumulate private wealth. Sure, some do, but not the majority.
All we're arguing is to what degree we limit the accumulation of personal wealth, and to what degree we provide social services. I happen to agree that corporations should not have so many individual rights as they currently enjoy, and I also believe that corporate officers that have subdivided their companies up into small entities to attempt to limit liability should not be free to do so. I also believe that there should be limits on the amount of financial assistance offered to those unemployed that have children, and that many things that qualify for assistance should not do so, and that continuing to receive benefits should be somewhat contingent on proving that one is making a concerted effort to find work.
I'm sure that some disagree with me. That's fine. I don't want to hear how some view that could be interpreted as possibly relating to mine is bad, I want to hear about how someone's different idea and its merits, and after we've established pros, let's look at cons.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You're probably not poor enough for free electricity if you can run cloud servers... But you will have the benefit of paying taxes so that those poor enough can get free electricity!
Rich people don't pay taxes in Greece. Most of the wealthy doctors, attorneys and similar higher middle class report their income to be about 1000EUR/month, and basically pay no taxes. That's one of the reasons how the entire problem started. An effort to make them pay taxes after the crisis started ended miserably.
No sig today.
How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US?
The problem is that you always end up trying to compare apples to oranges, how important is an engineer compared to a doctor compared to a plumber? What does job performance mean? Or is it just work is work, it all pays the same? That's one way to make sure nobody wants the hard jobs or to work hard. Same goes for services, what's more important my healthcare plan, your kid's education or my dad's pension? Nobody has an objective standard of fairness and trying to assign value by committee will fail as a thousand special interests tries to drag it this way and that.
Another important factor is that assigned values can't deal with fluctuations in supply and demand, if there's a shortage of pork and an excess of beef prices will adjust to even it out, you can't just demand it keep a certain price by fiat unless you want empty shelves. Which is not to say that the paycheck is the biggest where it's most "deserved" or "useful", but the capitalist system does a pretty good job at directing talent to the well-paying jobs and distributing non-essential scarce resources.
You could do a lot within the capitalist system just providing special tax benefits to the groups you want to support. But chances are you'd have to take them in taxes from somebody else. It wouldn't really work any better or different if you take away the money, somebody would be grabbing compensation from one group and giving it to another saying here, you deserve it more. And then ones who just got deprived would scream bloody murder. It's not hard to find faults with the market economy, but it's not hard to find faults with the plan economy either. In other words, explain a better system that'd actually work in the real world with selfish people who want to game the system.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That is not the only thing they are being asked for. They are also being asked to cut the minimum wage, rise working hours, cut pensions, fire public sector employees and sell state enterprises including the electric power company. The result of those measures, rather unsurprisingly, was 25% unemployment, including over 50% youth unemployment, people who cannot pay back their loans and more vagrant on the streets.
Unless the Greek government offers these people a change to live a decent life what do you think will happen?
Or so you keep hearing. But when you actually look at the statistics the amount of people who actually do that is rather low.
How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US?
What if it didn't matter how the fruits of labor were distributed so long as the number of fruits grew faster for each individual? That is, what if society was not a zero-sum game involving distribution of a set supply but a question of setting up the rules for maximum growth of the total?
I, for one, would rather consume 50-units in a community of individuals making 100 each then just getting 25 in a community making 25, even if the latter was distributed more equitably. To be fair, this is a point that a lot of people differ on - I've had some people earnestly believe that the disparately of consumption is itself an evil that's worth paying the price of making everyone worse off on an absolute scale.
[ Note that none of this suggests that unbridled capitalism is the best at growing the average consumption power. The history of capitalism is full of crony deals and other market perversities that ended up making everyone poorer on the whole (even as it made some individuals rich). Ultimately this is distinction that I think we need to abide -- are people getting rich by making everyone better off (e.g. by giving people things they actually want at a price they are willing to pay) or are they getting rich at the expense of others. ]
Actually Germany is not socialism. nor are most other european counties, like one of the parents up claimed. ...
Arguable Scandinavia is navigating a middle way between socialism/non socialism.
However americans have a retarded idea what socialism actually is.
Universal healthcare? Socialism! (Rofl, it is a basic human right! China had that 4000 years ago, so had Egypt 6000 years ago)
Unemployment insurrance? Socialism!!! Rofl
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
After a few lines it will start sounding racist. It is not. The post will be long, but it is worth to click on 'read more'. (It is really worth it, for the last anecdote)
Disclaimer: I know a lot of greeks. I have a few greek friends. I have been in Greece often, can not remember how often, perhaps like 10 times. I had a room mate for 10 years who was greek, I played basket ball and one mate was greek, he invited our team to tournaments in Athens. That was actually the first time I was in Greece, around 1992.
Another disclaimer: all stories (except about the blinds and the windmill frauds) are stuff I have experienced myself. Yes that includes the 'pension fraud'.
Greece never was a poor country. It simply had a 'low exchange rate' from their Drachma to the DM/EUR.
In comparison to germans every greek is RICH! They OWN a flat in the city, Thessaloniki, Athens or whatever AND one or more houses at the sea, on an island or at the mountain site. Basically everyone who lives close to the sea has one or more boats. And and and ... (they got OWND, when they could not get their greedy mouthes filled enough)
The problem with the greek is very simple: they are cheaters/tricksters/fraudsters. It is kinda their national sport. They rip off tourists, EACH OTHER, the EU, whomever they can. The current situation is just a massive backfire of their idiotic philosophy of life.
How do you make a greek, you best friend? Catch him while he tries to cheat/trick on you! By that you get his respect!
If you agree to an insane price in his shop he registers you as an idiot, gives you a business card of his relatives restaurant, then calls him and describes that likely a few idiots to rip off come next days.
I guess there are plenty of people pointing out their insane tax regulations ( the richest greeks pay no taxes) ... so I skip that.
Fraud that I have out of german newspapers: ... whatever). A few years ago they made an investigation. Surprise: no one was blind on that island.
1) an island with 6000 inhabitants had about 3000 blind people. Health insurance payed extras for the 3000 (money for the guide dog, a helper in your household
2) they got a few hundred millions EUR from the EU to set up a wind park on an island. Actually, they did that. But they never connected it to the grid. Turns out, the contract with the EU did not require that. The greeks simply shrug and wonder why the EU does not pay no more.
3) illegal construction is everywhere, including fire clearing (burning century old oil groves). The background is: if you have the first level of the house built and it is inhabited, then regardless of missing building permit, fire cleansing (was a thunderstorm anyway) or bad construction, the authorities can not legally break it down anymore.
My experience.
4) If you fly to Channia on Crete, your plane lands like 20km outside of the city. Just in time there is a bus that brings you into the city, a normal landline bus. If you enter the bus they don't sell you a ticket. Trying to convince you that the bus is 'special' and you need to take a taxi/cab. Usually there is a luggage compartment below the bus, with your luggage. While you are arguing with the ticket seller, someone will throw out your luggage onto the road. No chance. When you get out to collect it, the bus departs and you have to take a cab.
Second time I knew the drill. Took my luggage inside, was anyway only a small and a big rucksack.
The ticket seller tried to throw me out by force! 'Unfortunately' a greek living in my hometown who was in the same plane told him, he knew me. So suddenly the ticket seller sold me a ticket for like 20cents our day money. On the other hand, it had not looked good if a 25 year old tourist punches a 60 year old ticket seller into the face.
5) After or during my basket ball tournament my team, like 12 people plus trainer plus some relatives of our greek team mate where for a long long long ni
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.