Greece Watch...

[adam2]

There was a very doomerish article in todays Daily Mail about Greece.
Not exactly a qaulity newspaper, but it is widely read.
Suprisingly supportive/positive about the Greek people, blaming all the woes on bad or corrupt politicians.

Could never happen here could it !

[woodpecker]

I agree that there are some cuts which could easily be made (like paying politicians less). But you still have the problem that the current system depends on economic growth and most of your cuts involve reducing the level of disposable income of large numbers of people.

But a dollar left in private hands will be spent more productively then any government program ever will.

Not necessarily. It depends which private hands it is left in. If it is being redirected from the poor to the rich, as you are advocating, it isn't likely to be spent at all.

Agreed.
Governments will spend all that they receive.
Ordinary consumers will have a percentage propensity to consume which is highly negatively correlated with their income. As income rises, the propensity to consume falls. (This is standard economic theory, based on actual measurement in different countries that establish actual coefficients.)

The lower-income individual will spend almost all their income on ordinary goods and services, and further, savings ratios are in relative terms at a low right now. They spend all their money as they need to.

The higher-income individual will spend much less of their money on ordinary goods and services: there will be a large top slice spent on investments/assets. If you make £1m a year net, then you'll maybe spend £200k or £300k on ordinary goods and services, and probably >50% will go on investments and assets: stocks and shares, bonds, real estate, gold, works of art etc.

However, as Greenspan finally admitted, asset markets do not behave like ordinary goods and services markets ("the flaw" as he called it). The more money piles in to them, the bigger the bubble. Which is what we have experienced recently.

Alongside that, we have a shift of the top 1% in the USA now getting 25% of the income... compared to 9% of the income in the early 70s. The consequence of this is that there's more and more investment/asset money chasing the same assets, as relatively speaking the poor are poorer and the rich richer, and the latter need somewhere to put all this new money (and the poor become more indebted to them).

Allowing the wealthy to keep more of that income only leads to one place: asset bubbles. And that is apart from the relative negative impact on macro-level expenditure.

[woodpecker]

There was a very doomerish article in todays Daily Mail about Greece.
Not exactly a qaulity newspaper, but it is widely read.
Suprisingly supportive/positive about the Greek people, blaming all the woes on bad or corrupt politicians.

Could never happen here could it !

I think I caught something at the end of Newsnight that said that on Monday they would be taking a look at how Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to hide all that debt from Brussels.

It would be interesting to know who - on each side - signed the deals.

[UndercoverElephant]

So a tax increase will fall as always on the middle class where I sit just a little above and a bit to the right of dead center.

What most Americans consider "dead center", most Europeans would call "centre-right." What most Europeans call "dead centre", most Americans would call "centre-left."

The United States is probably the most right-wing democracy I can think of, and has been for the whole of my life.

Other then Nationalised health care what left leaning program has the US not adopted? I'd say that America is about fifteen trillion too far to the left.

So do most Americans, and since it patently isn't true, the only sensible conclusion one can arrive at is that most Americans are very right wing.

[UndercoverElephant]

Newsnight was pretty good on Greece tonight.

Catching it on Iplayer now. You know it's serious when Stephanie Flanders is presenting it...

[vtsnowedin]

What most Americans consider "dead center", most Europeans would call "centre-right." What most Europeans call "dead centre", most Americans would call "centre-left."

The United States is probably the most right-wing democracy I can think of, and has been for the whole of my life.

Other then Nationalised health care what left leaning program has the US not adopted? I'd say that America is about fifteen trillion too far to the left.

So do most Americans, and since it patently isn't true, the only sensible conclusion one can arrive at is that most Americans are very right wing.

Might I suggest UC that your view of Americans is skewed due to your own personal point of view which is akin to the left field line in a ball park way way up in the bleacher seats. Everything you see is to your right and anything right of the pitchers mound is far away from you so must be far right even if only a spitball off from center.

[UndercoverElephant]

Other then Nationalised health care what left leaning program has the US not adopted? I'd say that America is about fifteen trillion too far to the left.

So do most Americans, and since it patently isn't true, the only sensible conclusion one can arrive at is that most Americans are very right wing.

Might I suggest UC that your view of Americans is skewed due to your own personal point of view which is akin to the left field line in a ball park way way up in the bleacher seats. Everything you see is to your right and anything right of the pitchers mound is far away from you so must be far right even if only a spitball off from center.

Maybe...but I'm not just comparing the US to my own views or the situation in the UK. I'm comparing it to places like Holland or Sweden. Where would you put them on your left/right scale?

And as I've said before, I'm personally not really a creature of the hard left. Some of my views are more in line with the ideas of the hard right than the hard left, and others are hard green and would be totally unacceptable to most people on both the left and the right. What I really am is a hard green "anarcho-primitivist."

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/fe ... bankruptcy

I'm really worried. I think there is a risk that we will go bankrupt and I've thought a lot about being prepared," said Dimitra Partheniou, 61, in Athens. "I've gone through all the scenarios: of there being no food, of people being attacked as they go to the supermarket, of banks being looted. And I've decided that if that happens we're moving to Poros [an island] because there, at least, we've got enough land to cultivate tomatoes and corn."

With an unemployed daughter and several friends out of work, Partheniou readily concedes that she might be more anxious than most. None of her friends, lunching after work in a subterranean taverna, believe bankruptcy is upon them – even if the country's economic crisis dominates the conversation. Like most Greeks, hit by repeated rounds of austerity, they are too busy surviving to contemplate such things.

"It will never happen. It would be terrible. Europe would never let it happen. There would be civil war," said Constantinos Trikaliotis, a chauffeur in his 50s. "But what I want to know is why is it that ordinary people have to pay for this crisis? Why is it that none of these economic measures have worked?"

Amazing that people still don't get it.

The plebs are always the last to wake up... the Greek rich got out years ago into Swiss bank accounts and Knightsbridge townhouses.

Maybe this is why there is a rich and poor throughout human history... certain people 'get' things that are coming and the risks to their financial wealth and other never 'get' it until it is too late.

[vtsnowedin]

Lets see Holland? Netherlands-Amsterdam-girls in the show windows, beer for breakfast, legal recreational drugs? Seems a seven to the left to me on a scale of 0 being center and 10 being the left or right foul lines. I don't know enough about EU tax policy or the Netherlands business rules to have an opinion. As to Sweden I haven't been paying attention to them so am perhaps years out of date but I remember them having a middle income tax rate of fifty percent and a full plate of socialist programs. About a five to the left but if they have managed to keep the bills paid for decades at those rates I'd have to move them over to a left 3.
Where do you place the UK?

[UndercoverElephant]

Amazing that people still don't get it.

The plebs are always the last to wake up... the Greek rich got out years ago into Swiss bank accounts and Knightsbridge townhouses.

I think the people of Greece are very much aware that they are in deep trouble, and they can see no way out of it. As Paul Mason put it "they can't see past the fog." Which is hardly surprising when you consider that people like you and me have probably spent many hundreds of hours reading, thinking and posting about this and we can't see past the fog either. We still don't know what is actually going to happen. All we know is that something is going to happen, and that it is going to be big and bad. What Greece will look like 3 years from now...nobody knows.

The key thing that almost everybody now "gets" is this: the austerity plan is not working, and future austerity plans won't work either (they will not lead to Greece becoming solvent again, ever.) And if you can't follow the logic from that to "A Greek default cannot be avoided" then there is something wrong with you.

Maybe this is why there is a rich and poor throughout human history... certain people 'get' things that are coming and the risks to their financial wealth and other never 'get' it until it is too late.

No. That division has always been a result of power and politics, not human inabilities to figure out what is going on.

[woodpecker]

Other then Nationalised health care what left leaning program has the US not adopted? I'd say that America is about fifteen trillion too far to the left.

So do most Americans, and since it patently isn't true, the only sensible conclusion one can arrive at is that most Americans are very right wing.

Might I suggest UC that your view of Americans is skewed due to your own personal point of view which is akin to the left field line in a ball park way way up in the bleacher seats. Everything you see is to your right and anything right of the pitchers mound is far away from you so must be far right even if only a spitball off from center.

It's taken as a given in Europe that US politics is to the right of most countries we have regular dealings with.

This from a Swedish academic:

"US politics often look absurd from a European perspective, since the entire bipartisan system maps onto the conservative half of European politics."

and

"Looking at the presidential candidates, I am frankly appalled. None of them would be a viable politician in Sweden. They all support the death penalty, none advocates strict gun control and all make frequent mention of their religious beliefs in public. These are extremist stances. Not even the tiny Christian Democrat party mentions God publicly in Sweden, for fear of alienating the pragmatic rationalist majority.

From a European perspective, US politics are an ongoing battle between the extreme Right and the middle Right... "

[nexus]

+1 Beria can't you see that money, especially lots of it gives people MANY more options (eg Knightsbridge townhouses) than poverty.

It does not necessarily mean that the poor don't know what's going on, they're just unable to do anything about it except get shafted by a rich kleptocracy class, which clearly you identify with, especially given your use of the word 'plebs' to describe ordinary hard working people.

[UndercoverElephant]

Lets see Holland? Netherlands-Amsterdam-girls in the show windows, beer for breakfast, legal recreational drugs? Seems a seven to the left to me on a scale of 0 being center and 10 being the left or right foul lines. I don't know enough about EU tax policy or the Netherlands business rules to have an opinion. As to Sweden I haven't been paying attention to them so am perhaps years out of date but I remember them having a middle income tax rate of fifty percent and a full plate of socialist programs. About a five to the left but if they have managed to keep the bills paid for decades at those rates I'd have to move them over to a left 3.
Where do you place the UK?

About 0. The left in the UK had its back broken by Margaret Thatcher. New Labour wasn't leftist. It was centrist. That's why Blair won three elections.

[jonny2mad]

The UK has 50% taxation and a raft of social programmes, I'd say all main UK party's are left wing

[UndercoverElephant]

The UK has 50% taxation and a raft of social programmes, I'd say all main UK party's are left wing

The Tories are left wing?