Airlines are supported in several ways. One is that they pay less fuel tax. Then there are the bailouts that they get every now and then. The tax breaks that they give to airports. Not to mention incentives, grants, funding, etc to airports.
It wasn't just the pensions that were cut. Wages have been cut as well. Including the minimum wage.
It is easy to extrapolate a couple of anecdotal remarks about Greek pensioners to the entire population. A lot of the comments you make are plain bogus. Get in your head that Greece has less government employees per capita than Germany. So claims that they have more governmental overhead and an oversize government are bunk. Greek citizens typically also have more deposits than Germans so claims that Greek citizens are financially irresponsible are bunk as well.
As for pensions, in any country pensions are paid out of a fund which is paid by contributions from salaries. People are paid commensurately with what they put into the fund. They aren't getting something for nothing. The state has as much of an obligation to pay these creditors back as they have the obligation to pay back external creditors. Rather unsurprisingly if you cut the minimum wage and depress wages the payments to the pension fund are reduced and you start having difficulties with cash flow for paying pensions for retired people. Well duh.
The mistake the Eurozone leaders made was that austerity by cutting wages and entering deflation does not have the same economic effect as an inflationary policy of printing more money and inflating wages and prices. Austerity makes prior compromises harder to pay back. Private loans, corporate loans, etc. It makes tax receipts shrink, as corporations can more easily evade taxes than the middle class, leading to tax hikes to maintain government revenue. The tax increases and the deflation have the effect of reducing economic activity, if I can get more out of my buck tomorrow why spend it today, leading to an economic depression and inability to pay back the external debt. You will notice that the volume amount of debt as a fraction of GDP in Greece has actually increased since they started the austerity and some economists say at current GDP growth rates the debt will be paid back in over 200 years which for all practical intents and purposes is never.
The Greek people got themselves into this mess with a lot of external help namely from Germans arms dealers who sold them a bunch of crap they did not need in order to meet some artificial NATO requirement in defense spending as a fraction of GDP. Germans complain about corruption in Greece but then German arms dealers actively corrupt Greek government officials in order to buy their equipment, deliver faulty equipment, and cheat their way out of the investments in Greek economy including shipyards that they promised to do.
Germans always claim to have a lot of money and power but they are the biggest cheats in Europe. They cheated their way out of WWII debt. In military programs they always claim they want to buy a lot of units to get workshare and jobs for their industry then backpedal their orders leaving others to foot the bill for them while demanding to keep their work share. They did this in the Eurofighter program. They do it in Airbus. They do it in EADS. It is pathetic. They never keep what they agreed in prior commitments.
As for the inflation when the Euro came into effect Germany was responsible for it to a large degree as well. They kept the DM artificially low in market value by keeping DMs stashed in banks and outside of the market, similar to what the US did with QE right now, which were then converted into Euros and injected into the system and loaned to countries like Greece.
The Eurozone is entering a deflationary period right now so yes the ECB will print more money with QE starting next month. They are less dumb than the current leadership in Germany and are trying to prevent that same thing that happened in Japan in the last decade and in the US in the 1970s. Think Greek like levels economic depression and unemployment except all over Europe. They need to print more money to prevent that. Pure and simple.
Tax evasion is a crime in the US and the EU. Yes HSBC are obliged to collect tax on EU citizens with Swiss banking accounts per a treaty between Switzerland and the EU.
Ah but you see the title is bogus and the fact is HSBC had both tax avoidance and tax evasion products. e.g. the EU has an agreement with Switzerland where Swiss banks are supposed to collect taxes on the bank accounts of EU citizens and pass them on. They weren't doing it. The operation was illegal.
People who got loans to buy a house or whatever will have more difficulty making payments leading banks to default. The debts stay the same and their salaries and pensions go down. That's the issue here.
The central powers were responsible for putting bankers in control of Greece and Italy and removing the elected government in what amounted to coups. Putting in charge people like Mario Monti. Which negotiated ruinous payback schemes which were made to enrich the bankers who caused the problem in the first place.
Which discuss the military industrial complex should be accounted for too. Guess which of the two countries, Greece and Germany, has a bigger military-industrial complex.
Retired people paid in order to get their pension. How come banks are given priority but retired people aren't? Retirees are creditors too. It is just a cheap shot against people who cannot fight back.
In the case of Spain and Ireland the governments had low debt, a lot lower debt than Germany, and the "crisis" happened when private banks started collapsing and these states assumed the private bank shortfalls. It is insane that this was not handled at an Eurozone wide level. There are no restrictions on money movement in the Eurozone. All it takes is a bank run and massive capital flight from one country to another inside the Eurozone to make that country have a financial problem and be declared a puppet state with no control over its own destiny. It is simply ridiculous. In my opinion they should have let a lot of the bad banks default instead of the states covering all that private debt.
Sure there was a large amount of corruption in Greece. Like the Greeks used to say they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. Is it surprising that these sorts of government corruption issues happen when the state goes for months without paying salaries?
The creditors have a responsibility to see if the debtor is able to pay before handing out the loans as well.
We had enough problems with indentured servitude and debtors prisons in the XIXth century.
The devaluation of the Icelandic krona also decreased the value of private debt denominated in krona. So it essentially made personal debts easier to pay. It is true inflation went up but wages went up as well to compensate.
Using gas propulsion on a submersible is hardly a new idea. Compressed air torpedos, like the Whitehead torpedo, were used in the XIXth century. Some of them were used by Norway during WWII to sink a Nazi cruiser. The torpedos were over 30 years old by then but they still worked.
Even a lot of more modern torpedos still use gas propulsion. The VA-111 Shkval uses a solid-fuel rocket for propulsion. Other rockets use hydrogen peroxide monopropellant rocket propulsion or other kinds of rocket propulsion.
More competitive in the long run... They have been applying the "reforms" for 7 years now. How longer do you want people to wait? Compare what happened in the PIIGS to what happened in Iceland which had much the same problem around the same time. They let a bunch of banks default and nationalized the largest ones. They have 4.4% unemployment. Because Iceland defaulted on a lot of debt there were claims that they would never get a loan again. Guess what. They are getting loans again.
we have found out that commercial companies may be interested in developing power sources which could offer free energy, but they sure as hell aren't interested in actually providing free energy
as for min wage, we all see how well raising min wage is working out now. more part time jobs and less full time workers. Also robots and self serve POS terminals. Yeah, thats REALLY helping
It means people can have more time off to pursue other interests. Seems like a win to me. I have nothing against robots per se because they basically increase productivity. The problem is we are getting past the time when they only were used to replace dangerous or menial tasks. Pretty soon there will be little left for people to do. This is not some Asimov socialist utopia.
Most unemployment benefit schemes work by pulling money out of a fund which was paid for with taxes the person unemployed paid for working prior to losing their job. Unemployment benefits are also usually time limited according to what you put in the fund to begin with. So claims that people are getting something for nothing by being unemployed are simply bunk. Once you exhaust that fund you usually get nothing more.
There are other schemes which do not work like that like Medicare or food stamps. In the case of food stamps at least it was sold as a way to pay farmers for excess food production that otherwise would have been sent to a landfill.
Getting out is not as easy as you think. Imagine you are living in the street and go to a job interview. Regardless of how well qualified you are your chances to actually get a job are pretty slim. Clean clothes? A bath? Shaving? Getting to work on time every day?
A lot of people living in the streets had regular lives but because of some reason, could be clinical depression, could be unemployment, end up living in the streets.
Another part of the answer, though, is not permitting the banks to do what they're doing right now with housing: refusing to sell it at market price. We have multiple homes for every homeless person in this country, let alone family, and houses are just rotting all over the nation while people are living in trailers in their neighbors' back yards. Houses actually depreciate faster when they're not being lived in even if nobody is breaking into them and stealing all the fixtures as is wont to happen, because humans tend to institute some stability of temperatures — to say nothing of maintaining the property, fixing leaks and that sort of thing. So they're actually destroying the available housing in the country for the sake of... what? Nobody knows.
There is a simply solution to this. Tax unoccupied property more than actually used property. However the opposite is usually true.
Slashdot Mirror
Airlines are supported in several ways. One is that they pay less fuel tax. Then there are the bailouts that they get every now and then. The tax breaks that they give to airports. Not to mention incentives, grants, funding, etc to airports.
More on Eurofighter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Eurofighter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It wasn't just the pensions that were cut. Wages have been cut as well. Including the minimum wage.
It is easy to extrapolate a couple of anecdotal remarks about Greek pensioners to the entire population. A lot of the comments you make are plain bogus. Get in your head that Greece has less government employees per capita than Germany. So claims that they have more governmental overhead and an oversize government are bunk. Greek citizens typically also have more deposits than Germans so claims that Greek citizens are financially irresponsible are bunk as well.
As for pensions, in any country pensions are paid out of a fund which is paid by contributions from salaries. People are paid commensurately with what they put into the fund. They aren't getting something for nothing. The state has as much of an obligation to pay these creditors back as they have the obligation to pay back external creditors. Rather unsurprisingly if you cut the minimum wage and depress wages the payments to the pension fund are reduced and you start having difficulties with cash flow for paying pensions for retired people. Well duh.
The mistake the Eurozone leaders made was that austerity by cutting wages and entering deflation does not have the same economic effect as an inflationary policy of printing more money and inflating wages and prices. Austerity makes prior compromises harder to pay back. Private loans, corporate loans, etc. It makes tax receipts shrink, as corporations can more easily evade taxes than the middle class, leading to tax hikes to maintain government revenue. The tax increases and the deflation have the effect of reducing economic activity, if I can get more out of my buck tomorrow why spend it today, leading to an economic depression and inability to pay back the external debt. You will notice that the volume amount of debt as a fraction of GDP in Greece has actually increased since they started the austerity and some economists say at current GDP growth rates the debt will be paid back in over 200 years which for all practical intents and purposes is never.
The Greek people got themselves into this mess with a lot of external help namely from Germans arms dealers who sold them a bunch of crap they did not need in order to meet some artificial NATO requirement in defense spending as a fraction of GDP. Germans complain about corruption in Greece but then German arms dealers actively corrupt Greek government officials in order to buy their equipment, deliver faulty equipment, and cheat their way out of the investments in Greek economy including shipyards that they promised to do.
Germans always claim to have a lot of money and power but they are the biggest cheats in Europe. They cheated their way out of WWII debt. In military programs they always claim they want to buy a lot of units to get workshare and jobs for their industry then backpedal their orders leaving others to foot the bill for them while demanding to keep their work share. They did this in the Eurofighter program. They do it in Airbus. They do it in EADS. It is pathetic. They never keep what they agreed in prior commitments.
As for the inflation when the Euro came into effect Germany was responsible for it to a large degree as well. They kept the DM artificially low in market value by keeping DMs stashed in banks and outside of the market, similar to what the US did with QE right now, which were then converted into Euros and injected into the system and loaned to countries like Greece.
The Eurozone is entering a deflationary period right now so yes the ECB will print more money with QE starting next month. They are less dumb than the current leadership in Germany and are trying to prevent that same thing that happened in Japan in the last decade and in the US in the 1970s. Think Greek like levels economic depression and unemployment except all over Europe. They need to print more money to prevent that. Pure and simple.
It probably has pulseaudio as well. Better to just dump Linux for FreeBSD if that happens.
Tax evasion is a crime in the US and the EU. Yes HSBC are obliged to collect tax on EU citizens with Swiss banking accounts per a treaty between Switzerland and the EU.
Ah but you see the title is bogus and the fact is HSBC had both tax avoidance and tax evasion products. e.g. the EU has an agreement with Switzerland where Swiss banks are supposed to collect taxes on the bank accounts of EU citizens and pass them on. They weren't doing it. The operation was illegal.
The article title is bunk. HSBC did both tax avoidance and tax evasion scheme4s.
People who got loans to buy a house or whatever will have more difficulty making payments leading banks to default. The debts stay the same and their salaries and pensions go down. That's the issue here.
The central powers were responsible for putting bankers in control of Greece and Italy and removing the elected government in what amounted to coups. Putting in charge people like Mario Monti. Which negotiated ruinous payback schemes which were made to enrich the bankers who caused the problem in the first place.
Which discuss the military industrial complex should be accounted for too. Guess which of the two countries, Greece and Germany, has a bigger military-industrial complex.
More lies. Greece has less people in the workforce working for the government than Germany.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Retired people paid in order to get their pension. How come banks are given priority but retired people aren't? Retirees are creditors too. It is just a cheap shot against people who cannot fight back.
In the case of Spain and Ireland the governments had low debt, a lot lower debt than Germany, and the "crisis" happened when private banks started collapsing and these states assumed the private bank shortfalls. It is insane that this was not handled at an Eurozone wide level. There are no restrictions on money movement in the Eurozone. All it takes is a bank run and massive capital flight from one country to another inside the Eurozone to make that country have a financial problem and be declared a puppet state with no control over its own destiny. It is simply ridiculous. In my opinion they should have let a lot of the bad banks default instead of the states covering all that private debt.
Sure there was a large amount of corruption in Greece. Like the Greeks used to say they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. Is it surprising that these sorts of government corruption issues happen when the state goes for months without paying salaries?
The creditors have a responsibility to see if the debtor is able to pay before handing out the loans as well.
We had enough problems with indentured servitude and debtors prisons in the XIXth century.
Even outside the US, during the so called Trente Glorieuses, the same thing happened in Europe.
Also the current inflation rate in Iceland is 0.8%. Hardly a disaster like you claim it to be.
The average wage in Iceland is over twice higher than that in Greece.
Unemployment in Iceland was at 9% in 2011 and has lowered to 4% since. Unemployment in Greece in comparison hasn't been going down by the same amount and is essentially at a steady level of 25%.
The devaluation of the Icelandic krona also decreased the value of private debt denominated in krona. So it essentially made personal debts easier to pay. It is true inflation went up but wages went up as well to compensate.
You don't know WTF you are talking about.
Using gas propulsion on a submersible is hardly a new idea. Compressed air torpedos, like the Whitehead torpedo, were used in the XIXth century. Some of them were used by Norway during WWII to sink a Nazi cruiser. The torpedos were over 30 years old by then but they still worked.
Even a lot of more modern torpedos still use gas propulsion. The VA-111 Shkval uses a solid-fuel rocket for propulsion. Other rockets use hydrogen peroxide monopropellant rocket propulsion or other kinds of rocket propulsion.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
More competitive in the long run... They have been applying the "reforms" for 7 years now. How longer do you want people to wait? Compare what happened in the PIIGS to what happened in Iceland which had much the same problem around the same time. They let a bunch of banks default and nationalized the largest ones. They have 4.4% unemployment. Because Iceland defaulted on a lot of debt there were claims that they would never get a loan again. Guess what. They are getting loans again.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I hope you like watching the world economy implode again.
we have found out that commercial companies may be interested in developing power sources which could offer free energy, but they sure as hell aren't interested in actually providing free energy
Remember what JP Morgan told Tesla?
as for min wage, we all see how well raising min wage is working out now. more part time jobs and less full time workers. Also robots and self serve POS terminals. Yeah, thats REALLY helping
It means people can have more time off to pursue other interests. Seems like a win to me. I have nothing against robots per se because they basically increase productivity. The problem is we are getting past the time when they only were used to replace dangerous or menial tasks. Pretty soon there will be little left for people to do. This is not some Asimov socialist utopia.
Most unemployment benefit schemes work by pulling money out of a fund which was paid for with taxes the person unemployed paid for working prior to losing their job. Unemployment benefits are also usually time limited according to what you put in the fund to begin with. So claims that people are getting something for nothing by being unemployed are simply bunk. Once you exhaust that fund you usually get nothing more.
There are other schemes which do not work like that like Medicare or food stamps. In the case of food stamps at least it was sold as a way to pay farmers for excess food production that otherwise would have been sent to a landfill.
Or so you keep hearing. But when you actually look at the statistics the amount of people who actually do that is rather low.
Getting out is not as easy as you think. Imagine you are living in the street and go to a job interview. Regardless of how well qualified you are your chances to actually get a job are pretty slim. Clean clothes? A bath? Shaving? Getting to work on time every day?
A lot of people living in the streets had regular lives but because of some reason, could be clinical depression, could be unemployment, end up living in the streets.
Capitalism worked fine before globalization. Back when anti-trust laws were worth a damn and countries actually taxed the rich. Like after WWII.
Another part of the answer, though, is not permitting the banks to do what they're doing right now with housing: refusing to sell it at market price. We have multiple homes for every homeless person in this country, let alone family, and houses are just rotting all over the nation while people are living in trailers in their neighbors' back yards. Houses actually depreciate faster when they're not being lived in even if nobody is breaking into them and stealing all the fixtures as is wont to happen, because humans tend to institute some stability of temperatures — to say nothing of maintaining the property, fixing leaks and that sort of thing. So they're actually destroying the available housing in the country for the sake of... what? Nobody knows.
There is a simply solution to this. Tax unoccupied property more than actually used property. However the opposite is usually true.