That would be because you cannot use gold as a direct payment currency any more easily than any other trade goods. It's a trade good, and trade for gold would be barter.
You could pay with gold after you denominate it in a currency for its value just like with any similar item (i.e. oil, platinum, diamonds), but that raises all kinds of questions about the denomination, its values, and potential for taxation and regulation.
But the specific tax known as VAT is only added when goods and services are sold to a consumer. That is why VAT typically varies depending on the type of good or service being sold.
Interesting. If so, this spells doom for the primary goal of bitcoin, that being anonymity as any seller would need to collect VAT from buyer and file it with his government.
Except that there is no overinvestment boom in Slovakia like there was in Spain and most of the debt they're taking on is because of fraudster states like Greece tanking EU economy.
Suggesting that two completely different states will arrive at exact same problem just because they both had to take debt (for completely different reasons) says a lot about the person suggesting it.
They had cheap credit forever now. Estonia for example had excellent credit rating for a very long time, and there was a lot of investment.
But personal debt and public debt didn't balloon because it's a different culture with actual concept of responsibility. Only corporate debt grew due to investments, and most of these were on a solid ground with great pay offs, like selling electricity to Finland or dairy to Russia. Even with Russian exports taking a massive hit due to sanction issues, they still managed to keep their debts low.
This has nothing to do with cheap credit and everything to do with culture of being honest and paying taxes versus culture of cheating and never paying taxes. Former can manage even under USSR, or on their own, latter can't manage on their own nor under EU.
The point being that bitcoin is simply not recognised by court as a valid currency. VAT is about paying in currency.
And mind you, only idiots paint "Europeans" as some kind of a monoculture. We have Greek who openly say that the only way they will pay taxes is through foreign oppression and then you have people who think that paying taxes is a great way to fund wide reaching social security for everyone.
They do. You should visit them to learn it first hand. Your underhanded insult merely underscores the fact that Greeks and people who agree with their current majority on this issue do indeed suffer from a nasty combination of superiority complex and persecution complex. Their problems are largely opposite of Greek ones, they have too much savings and too little debt, which causes underdevelopment. Which translates into poorer nation, but one that can stand on its own two feet without having to be a beggar of Europe.
All you say is irrelevant to people who he just openly insulted. It's relevant to Greeks. Not to even mention the fact that people in those countries do in fact live in far worse conditions that Greeks do. Anyone who has ever been to Estonia and Slovakia can testify to it. They just don't take on massive debt, nor rely on corrupt state handouts for their survival. Something they learned from after collapse of USSR. And they know how to live frugally and save for a rainy day. Another thing they learned from USSR days.
This is basic human relations. If you want to ask someone for help, you don't start it with "we are superior and you are lower than us". Varoufakis did. He acted like a professor teaching students, when in fact he entered an arena where he was but a first year student facing professors of political science. Needless to say he failed.
That's the reality of it. You can polish this turd to your liking, I'm sure that demagogues in Greece won't have any problems blaming Slovaks and Estonians for the current situation to avoid look at faults at home. I've already heard suggestions from your defence minister that "Baltics have staged a coup in Greece". After reading that and PM's statement that he "doesn't believe in the paper he signed", I can see that this is the same old Greece. One that lies to its benefactors to get the next fix of easy money and then openly blames said benefactors that it wasn't enough when it gets home.
Demagogues run your country now, as they do your media. And you have happily joined them. I only wish that you do in fact reject the terms of the third bailout, so we can stop paying for your tax avoidance because big European states are still unwilling to give up the geopolitical image.
So call your MP in Greece and tell him to reject the bailout terms, pretty please? Who knows, it might help. And we're clearly in agreement that current deal is bad, so please reject it?
Welcome to Europe. Lot of different languages in relevant local media here that don't get translated into English.
Story was big enough that this particular piece of news was all over Estonia to the extent where our (Finnish) media took note. He really pissed Estonians and Slovaks in that speech, as he basically stated that Greeks have a humanitarian disaster going on because of their current level of life and then named a specific sum.
See, Slovaks and Estonians have a much lower level of life and have to live off far less, yet he expected them to pay up to help Greeks based on this "humanitarian disaster". And when Estonian MinFin went face to face and pointed this out fo him after the speech and asked him what Varoufakis thought of situation in his country if Greek level of life is a "humanitarian crisis", he was utterly dismissed because apparently Estonian MinFin "missed the point".
After that Slovaks and Estonians were pretty much #1 in demanding that no further money be loaned to Greece. Varoufakis lost them in that first night through being simply incompetent in even basic human relations, a theme which persisted over the rest of his tenure as Greek MinFin. Most English media didn't take any note, as it generally doesn't care about smaller countries. Quite understandable, how often do you see news about Estonian or Slovak interests in English media anyway?
You are pointing fingers at flies on the wall to avoid having to look at the huge Greek elephant shitting up the room.
Get over the flies and look at the damn elephant. It is far more relevant to your situation than any of the off-topic faults you can find in EU's past.
Look up his initial speach to the Eurogroup MinFins when he first met them in his new capacity and Greek MinFin. Then look at what Estonian media (Eesti Päeväleht etc) quoted their MinFin on the topic.
You do not understand the topic. International financing is not about currency exchange, but about actual FINANCING.
Look that word up.
On a last note, Greece can easily repay its debt. All it would need to do was sell off a lot of state assets. The money exists in Greece already, it's just mainly tied to land rights, Orthodox Church holdings and so on. Greece is quite a wealthy nation.
Problem is not lack of means. It's lack of will. Greek government was whining about actually establishing land registry for years now, which would actually enable them to sell many profitable territories for development. Great beaches and so on. They still haven't done it.
No, they weren't. All we had was promises of reform that were barely implemented on the surface and not at all where it mattered. That's the reason why we're still in this mess.
If Greece actually reformed, we'd see Greek workers in private sector paying taxes at the very least.
Eastern Europeans are the main opponents of bailouts. After Varoufakis straight up implied in his initial fiery speech that Estonians and Slovaks are subhumans beneath Greeks and then dismissed Estonian MinFin when he pointed this out to him after the speech, he basically ensured that no Eastern European with a shred of sanity would stand with Greece.
So your argument is that when democracy tells us to pay you, it's about "democratic will of the people", but when democracy tells us not to pay you, it's "tyranny of the majority"?
I'll just leave this link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It used to be a Greek word. You should at least learn your own history.
Seems to be mostly natural movement as related to slow recovery in US while EU is still in shaky semi-recession with large unemployment. Greek factor appears mostly as noise in occasional speculative up-down dibs.
One sided declaration takes you down the path of Argentina. You need a deal with all your creditors where they accept the terms, or you're simply going to be a pariah when it comes to getting funding from abroad for anything or owning anything abroad.
Actually Greek expatriates around Europe appear to be mostly apologising for their fellow Greeks' actions and ashamed of their current actions. We just had a nice interview on our state broadcaster with a couple of them, nice middle aged people. Well adjusted. And massively apologetic about their home country that doesn't understand that it needs to actually pay its taxes and debts.
See, that's what happens when you leave to go live in a country where people actually pay taxes and expect debts to be repaid. And where things just work - you can drink tap water, sewage system can easily take the toilet paper, those kinds of things. Because there's enough taxes for it and because public servants take their jobs as serious jobs and not political handouts they're entitled to.
Not at all. You don't need military to extract debt payments. All you need is to cut country off from the international financing, then simply wait for its own populace to tear the idiots suggesting that it's a good thing to pieces when they cannot get medicine for their loved ones or fuel to get anywhere.
And after angry mob has torn people like your to pieces on the streets, you make a deal with the people who understand what's actually at stake.
Essentially this is about the basic concept of "actually paying the taxes you owe". In Greece, that is a massive exception and I remember a friend from my golden days of WoW lamenting that her job at military meant that she was, and I quote from memory "the only one she knows who pays tax on her salary". She thought it was really unfair. Not that others weren't paying, but that she was.
It's going to require a massive cultural change, not just a technical one.
Actually what they want is for Greece to stop acting like a developing country and start acting like a developed one. You know, actually paying taxes in the private sector would be a good start. Having a land registry which says who owns what land would be a start. Not having corruption levels and political hirings as a norm and meritocracy as an exception would be a start.
Funniest part is that Syriza came promising to deliver just that, and then proceeded with all the political hirings and corruption just like its predecessors. Power corrupts.
They haven't. They simply have their own constituents to answer to, so they kicked the ball ahead to their successors. By the time Greek debt they're creating here matures, it will be our grand-grandchildren who will have to think about n+1st Greek bailout to pay for it.
I'm really interested how our government here in Finland will hold over it. They have "no increased exposure to Greek debt" written into their government policy cornerstone paper just a few months ago when they created the government. I suspect there will be some massive waves, and the Finns party who was the key party behind that statement will take a massive popularity hit if they stay in the government and Tsipras actually manages to sell this awful deal to his parliament.
And surprisingly, local governments are often in full support of drone killings. Consider Yemen which is now in a full civil war in part because of the government's actions.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be because you cannot use gold as a direct payment currency any more easily than any other trade goods. It's a trade good, and trade for gold would be barter.
You could pay with gold after you denominate it in a currency for its value just like with any similar item (i.e. oil, platinum, diamonds), but that raises all kinds of questions about the denomination, its values, and potential for taxation and regulation.
But the specific tax known as VAT is only added when goods and services are sold to a consumer. That is why VAT typically varies depending on the type of good or service being sold.
No, but it has to surrender its own information to the government for taxation purposes.
Much of raison d'etre for bitcoin is gone if seller is not anonymous.
Interesting. If so, this spells doom for the primary goal of bitcoin, that being anonymity as any seller would need to collect VAT from buyer and file it with his government.
It's not a rationalisation. It's fact. There is no VAT in barter.
Except that there is no overinvestment boom in Slovakia like there was in Spain and most of the debt they're taking on is because of fraudster states like Greece tanking EU economy.
Suggesting that two completely different states will arrive at exact same problem just because they both had to take debt (for completely different reasons) says a lot about the person suggesting it.
They had cheap credit forever now. Estonia for example had excellent credit rating for a very long time, and there was a lot of investment.
But personal debt and public debt didn't balloon because it's a different culture with actual concept of responsibility. Only corporate debt grew due to investments, and most of these were on a solid ground with great pay offs, like selling electricity to Finland or dairy to Russia. Even with Russian exports taking a massive hit due to sanction issues, they still managed to keep their debts low.
This has nothing to do with cheap credit and everything to do with culture of being honest and paying taxes versus culture of cheating and never paying taxes. Former can manage even under USSR, or on their own, latter can't manage on their own nor under EU.
The point being that bitcoin is simply not recognised by court as a valid currency. VAT is about paying in currency.
And mind you, only idiots paint "Europeans" as some kind of a monoculture. We have Greek who openly say that the only way they will pay taxes is through foreign oppression and then you have people who think that paying taxes is a great way to fund wide reaching social security for everyone.
They do. You should visit them to learn it first hand. Your underhanded insult merely underscores the fact that Greeks and people who agree with their current majority on this issue do indeed suffer from a nasty combination of superiority complex and persecution complex. Their problems are largely opposite of Greek ones, they have too much savings and too little debt, which causes underdevelopment. Which translates into poorer nation, but one that can stand on its own two feet without having to be a beggar of Europe.
Your dismissive tone is quite telling.
All you say is irrelevant to people who he just openly insulted. It's relevant to Greeks. Not to even mention the fact that people in those countries do in fact live in far worse conditions that Greeks do. Anyone who has ever been to Estonia and Slovakia can testify to it. They just don't take on massive debt, nor rely on corrupt state handouts for their survival. Something they learned from after collapse of USSR. And they know how to live frugally and save for a rainy day. Another thing they learned from USSR days.
This is basic human relations. If you want to ask someone for help, you don't start it with "we are superior and you are lower than us". Varoufakis did. He acted like a professor teaching students, when in fact he entered an arena where he was but a first year student facing professors of political science. Needless to say he failed.
That's the reality of it. You can polish this turd to your liking, I'm sure that demagogues in Greece won't have any problems blaming Slovaks and Estonians for the current situation to avoid look at faults at home. I've already heard suggestions from your defence minister that "Baltics have staged a coup in Greece". After reading that and PM's statement that he "doesn't believe in the paper he signed", I can see that this is the same old Greece. One that lies to its benefactors to get the next fix of easy money and then openly blames said benefactors that it wasn't enough when it gets home.
Demagogues run your country now, as they do your media. And you have happily joined them. I only wish that you do in fact reject the terms of the third bailout, so we can stop paying for your tax avoidance because big European states are still unwilling to give up the geopolitical image.
So call your MP in Greece and tell him to reject the bailout terms, pretty please? Who knows, it might help. And we're clearly in agreement that current deal is bad, so please reject it?
Welcome to Europe. Lot of different languages in relevant local media here that don't get translated into English.
Story was big enough that this particular piece of news was all over Estonia to the extent where our (Finnish) media took note. He really pissed Estonians and Slovaks in that speech, as he basically stated that Greeks have a humanitarian disaster going on because of their current level of life and then named a specific sum.
See, Slovaks and Estonians have a much lower level of life and have to live off far less, yet he expected them to pay up to help Greeks based on this "humanitarian disaster". And when Estonian MinFin went face to face and pointed this out fo him after the speech and asked him what Varoufakis thought of situation in his country if Greek level of life is a "humanitarian crisis", he was utterly dismissed because apparently Estonian MinFin "missed the point".
After that Slovaks and Estonians were pretty much #1 in demanding that no further money be loaned to Greece. Varoufakis lost them in that first night through being simply incompetent in even basic human relations, a theme which persisted over the rest of his tenure as Greek MinFin. Most English media didn't take any note, as it generally doesn't care about smaller countries. Quite understandable, how often do you see news about Estonian or Slovak interests in English media anyway?
You are pointing fingers at flies on the wall to avoid having to look at the huge Greek elephant shitting up the room.
Get over the flies and look at the damn elephant. It is far more relevant to your situation than any of the off-topic faults you can find in EU's past.
Look up his initial speach to the Eurogroup MinFins when he first met them in his new capacity and Greek MinFin. Then look at what Estonian media (Eesti Päeväleht etc) quoted their MinFin on the topic.
You do not understand the topic. International financing is not about currency exchange, but about actual FINANCING.
Look that word up.
On a last note, Greece can easily repay its debt. All it would need to do was sell off a lot of state assets. The money exists in Greece already, it's just mainly tied to land rights, Orthodox Church holdings and so on. Greece is quite a wealthy nation.
Problem is not lack of means. It's lack of will. Greek government was whining about actually establishing land registry for years now, which would actually enable them to sell many profitable territories for development. Great beaches and so on. They still haven't done it.
Iran is not landlocked. It has a long shoreline in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman which includes access to Indian Ocean.
No, they weren't. All we had was promises of reform that were barely implemented on the surface and not at all where it mattered. That's the reason why we're still in this mess.
If Greece actually reformed, we'd see Greek workers in private sector paying taxes at the very least.
Eastern Europeans are the main opponents of bailouts. After Varoufakis straight up implied in his initial fiery speech that Estonians and Slovaks are subhumans beneath Greeks and then dismissed Estonian MinFin when he pointed this out to him after the speech, he basically ensured that no Eastern European with a shred of sanity would stand with Greece.
So your argument is that when democracy tells us to pay you, it's about "democratic will of the people", but when democracy tells us not to pay you, it's "tyranny of the majority"?
I'll just leave this link here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It used to be a Greek word. You should at least learn your own history.
Seems to be mostly natural movement as related to slow recovery in US while EU is still in shaky semi-recession with large unemployment. Greek factor appears mostly as noise in occasional speculative up-down dibs.
One sided declaration takes you down the path of Argentina. You need a deal with all your creditors where they accept the terms, or you're simply going to be a pariah when it comes to getting funding from abroad for anything or owning anything abroad.
Actually Greek expatriates around Europe appear to be mostly apologising for their fellow Greeks' actions and ashamed of their current actions. We just had a nice interview on our state broadcaster with a couple of them, nice middle aged people. Well adjusted. And massively apologetic about their home country that doesn't understand that it needs to actually pay its taxes and debts.
See, that's what happens when you leave to go live in a country where people actually pay taxes and expect debts to be repaid. And where things just work - you can drink tap water, sewage system can easily take the toilet paper, those kinds of things. Because there's enough taxes for it and because public servants take their jobs as serious jobs and not political handouts they're entitled to.
Not at all. You don't need military to extract debt payments. All you need is to cut country off from the international financing, then simply wait for its own populace to tear the idiots suggesting that it's a good thing to pieces when they cannot get medicine for their loved ones or fuel to get anywhere.
And after angry mob has torn people like your to pieces on the streets, you make a deal with the people who understand what's actually at stake.
Essentially this is about the basic concept of "actually paying the taxes you owe". In Greece, that is a massive exception and I remember a friend from my golden days of WoW lamenting that her job at military meant that she was, and I quote from memory "the only one she knows who pays tax on her salary". She thought it was really unfair. Not that others weren't paying, but that she was.
It's going to require a massive cultural change, not just a technical one.
Actually what they want is for Greece to stop acting like a developing country and start acting like a developed one. You know, actually paying taxes in the private sector would be a good start. Having a land registry which says who owns what land would be a start. Not having corruption levels and political hirings as a norm and meritocracy as an exception would be a start.
Funniest part is that Syriza came promising to deliver just that, and then proceeded with all the political hirings and corruption just like its predecessors. Power corrupts.
They haven't. They simply have their own constituents to answer to, so they kicked the ball ahead to their successors. By the time Greek debt they're creating here matures, it will be our grand-grandchildren who will have to think about n+1st Greek bailout to pay for it.
I'm really interested how our government here in Finland will hold over it. They have "no increased exposure to Greek debt" written into their government policy cornerstone paper just a few months ago when they created the government. I suspect there will be some massive waves, and the Finns party who was the key party behind that statement will take a massive popularity hit if they stay in the government and Tsipras actually manages to sell this awful deal to his parliament.
And surprisingly, local governments are often in full support of drone killings. Consider Yemen which is now in a full civil war in part because of the government's actions.