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Software Devs Leaving Greece For Good, Finance Minister Resigns
New submitter TheHawke writes with this story from ZDNet about the exodus of software developers from Greece. "In the last three years, almost 80 percent of my friends, mostly developers, left Greece," software developer Panagiotis Kefalidis told ZDNet. "When I left for North America, my mother was not happy, but... it is what it is." It's not just the software developers quitting either. The Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis also resigned. A portion of his resignation announcement reads: "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."
Umm, I lived in Vancouver Canada for 10 years as a software developer and me and most of my software developer friends ALSO moved to the US (I currently work for Apple, most work for Google or other local companies). Greek developers may have an extra incentive to move, but they are hardly unique.
A strong group can make weak individuals stronger. Individuals who are SO weak that they just cannot be helped, are bound to leave the petri dish and go infect some other group.
By the way, this group-is-everything mentality that you disparage (perhaps because you take such a culture for granted) is exactly the reason why Scandinavian countries rank among the highest in the world in terms of standard of living, literacy, overall happiness, quality of life, etc.
Meanwhile, your fellow Swedes -- yourself included, apparently -- who flee to countries where individualism is favored, are going to be in for a rude awakening when they discover that in such countries, individuals are *nothing*.
Out of many....ONE. This is the motto on US currency. Sadly, such thinking has been pretty much destroyed in favor of individual, every-man-for-himself mentality. When every-man does not give back to the group (as is no longer encouraged or rewarded in American society), the group as a whole is doomed.
Take away message: you would do well to move back to Sweden, because America is fucked.
This 'no' vote self-imposes the spending cut that Greece hates to see but the 'yes' vote also imposes the spending cut. There is no way to avoid a spending cut for Greece.
Austerity is a strange word, it sounds sterile, it has strange connotations. The correct term is spending cuts.
You cut spending if you cannot afford what you are spending on and when you cannot borrow to spend either and in case of chronic offenders the sooner the creditors realize what they are dealing with the healthier for everybody. It's healthier for the spender, who has to come to terms of the impossible situation he is in and it is healthier for the creditor, who will avoid losing even more money. It is healthier for the overall economy not to have welfare State system in the first place, to have people consume based on what they produce and not based on what can be taken from somebody else without any form of repayment.
Real money does not come into being by magic, it is not printed into existence, it is not magically created on a computer. Real money is the result of productive activity, where the word 'productive' really means that something is being produced that others are voluntarily willing to trade for in a way that is sustainable for both, the producer and the consumer.
The world has been playing with fire for the last 100 years with everybody being on fiat, it's been playing with a gigantic fire since the USD became uncontrollably inflationary due to it not being backed by any production (USA has been running half a Trillion USD trade deficit for over a decade now) nor by any money reserves (USD is not backed by gold, Nixon defaulted on the dollar back in 1971, and that's how these problems of inflationary policies and welfare state accelerated).
USA has its own version of what is Greece experiencing right now, that's what 'debt ceiling' is. Many believe that USA can simply print bonds and sell them and get out of jail free, however this only works as long as somebody buys those bonds and the bond market is the biggest bubble of all. USA will have its own currency crisis and bonds are currency promised into the future, so that will also collapse.
As Germany now refuses to just pour money into this bottomless pit called Greece, people will refuse to just pour money into the bottomless pit called USA and that will be even more interesting to observe.
Everybody who tells you 'austerity does not work' are full of it. Austerity means you are not spending money you didn't earn and especially where it concerns consumption rather than investment, and ALL things that people want government to spend on are consumption and not investment, so the important distinction is this: government must be austere, only government austerity can reallocate the scarce resources to people, who will rebuild the economy.
In the long run Greece is better off because of this spending cut, it will learn to live within its means and maybe to produce more and it will have a healthy economy. But like any alcoholic or drug addict apparently it will have to hit the rock bottom before it will reform.
You can't handle the truth.
From what I can tell, nobody knows WTF it means.
The Greek government thinks that the will of the people now means they have more leverage to negotiate.
The problem is they're asking for handouts and free money from other governments who have to explain to their citizens Greek pensions are being funded by everybody else.
Greece is essentially bankrupt, and wants more money. So either every other EU government is going to throw even more taxpayer money into the pit which is Greece's economy, or they're going to tell Greece to piss up a rope.
This sounds like someone having their house foreclosed demanding the banks forgive their debt, lower their interest rate, and give them more money to pay bills.
In other words, it sounds like the Greek government is living in a fantasy where everybody else pays for their society.
And I'm not sure that's gonna happen.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The poor really don't have assets. The people who will really pay is the people who aren't rich but not poor either. Those who have money they put away for their later years and other needs will lose it. I feel sorry for them but there is little hope and it's going to get worse. The US will be in the same place in a decade or so. I have a retirement I'll probably never see.
Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure.
That situation is exactly the same in the US (except the gap is about $500 billion right now, more than the entire Greek debt). The only reason that the US keeps going is that they control the lender (the Federal Reserve). At least they think they do.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Meanwhile: I have to pay for my own hospital plan because in case I get sick I have to notify the public insurance carrier 15 days in advance of emergency surgery (no kidding!) or 3-4 months before booking an appointment with a doctor. I have to get an additional, expensive pension plan on top of the 350 Euros per month I am currently paying as mandatory social security because there will be no money when I'm 67 years old or have worked 40+ years to get the minimum pension of 700 Euros (nominal; actual payment after taxes and mandatory social security is around 480 Euros). I also need to set aside money to get the kids I'm planning on having to a private school because there are no teachers (not even substitutes) half of the time in the public schools.
If you are wondering why people tax evade you have to first ask the questions: 1. how much does the state take in taxes and 2. what does the state offer for the money it takes from its citizens? If the answers are "most of your money" and "not that much at all" respectively it doesn't take a genius to see why you get an endemic tax evasion for free.
Anyway. After three years of battling the system I gave up and moved away. My last tax filing in Greece was 2014 for my income in 2013. I am owed a 13,000 Euro tax return since August 10th, 2014. Of course it's NOT credited. And we're talking about money I have paid as a tax downpayment to the state since August 2013. They hold my money hostage for 2 years and they won't give it to me. Also, don't make the mistake of asking whether there's an interest rate for those two years. Don't be silly. There's not! Adding insult to injury I'm still a Greek tax citizen which means I get to pay taxes for the dividends I'm paid from my company abroad. Don't be ridiculous, of course they are NOT offset by the money the Greek state owes me! I have so far paid another 40+ thousand Euro taxes in these two years where the Greek state owes me the 13,000 Euro tax return.
I understand all this sounds alien to you. Why so much taxation, why no services in return, why the state isn't punctual in paying back. Beats me, brothers and sisters. I have concluded that one must be outright insane to try and do business if they're born in Greece.
Norway and Sweden's success has nothing to do with political models and entirely to do with geography. If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
Not even close. Sweden doesn't have one drop of oil, we have industry. And adding to that, the social programmes of Sweden are more expansive than our Norwegian brethren, who have oil. You see the Norwegians fund almost all their oil income into the world's largest and most well managed oil fund that is set up to last "indefinitely". They're most certainly not burning it. (The money. The majority of the oil most certainly burns).
Also, the oil is a recent thing, barely thirty years old. (I am old enough to remember when Norway was "poor" and we used to go shopping for cheaper staples there), and guess what, Sweden's social programmes were even further ahead than the rest of Europe in particular, and the world in general.
Stefan Axelsson