(July 7, 2011 at 5:53 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: That isnt really the message that I am getting from you. Your first paragraph has you saying that "What they need is to be given back their incomes" sounds a HELL OF A LOT like saying that taxes are the problem in Greece. If tax is a distraction from really understanding the problems in greece, then why is your proposed solution for Greece "giving back their incomes"? I sure hope you arent playing word games with me.
The problem is one of consumption vs production, Greece has unsustainable social spending, high consumption and a lack of productive sector to back it up, allowing people to keep their money instead of dumping it into some piece of shit pay-as-you-go Social security scheme and letting individuals invest it in the local economy, providing capital to be invested in productivity, efficiency and creating new jobs will remedy that situation - What I was describing was what I believe to be the best solution, not a description of the problem.
Bear in mind it's not the only way it could be done. Like my main point stated, there are other nations similar to Greece in their tax structures or percent of GDP as public spending (France), Countries with a similar size service sector (Australia) and countries with much higher public spending and taxes (Denmark) or much lower taxes and public spending (Singapore) who are in no where near the situation Greece is in - Unlike Greece they all have much less consumption relative to productive or wealth generating capacity and even though some are in noteworthy debt (French debt is 200% of GDP for instance, 50% higher than Greece) their economies are in a much better shape.
Quote:I dont care what other Progressives say..I am an independent Progressive.
I didn't mean to suggest that because you're a progressive too you should believe him, I suggested it as data because the bias in obtaining figures is negated - the author clearly did not believe it to be true prior - that makes it a valuable resource as data that you can be relatively confident hasn't been crafted with an agenda in mind. These figures are commonplace on Mises and Cato but they're not exactly impartial, I suspect their analysis would be less credible to you because they already agreed with the position prior to gathering the data.
void Wrote:WOW! You mean nobody will fail? Its a "win win win win win" situation? Everyone will get back their money..which I am assuming you mean that the health and retirement (what you wrongly call "entitlements") will be shut down / defunded, and they will all win? Everyone will be able to successfully save their money and invest in their own health and welfare and everyone will "win win win win win" and anyone who thinks the solution is taxing people (not raising taxes..but taxes PERIOD!) is absolutely crazy?
Fail in their investments? Hardly likely, especially considering that your average capital investment retirement scheme operates like a pool, the investment firm uses the capital invested by the people by further investing in different sectors of the economy expected to perform well with various hedges and options specifically because if one investment goes bad the cost is spread across the pool and no individual takes a net loss, similarly, if a percentage of retirement schemes go bad and we do have people who need help then the cost to the taxpayer of giving these people is significantly less than it otherwise would be running a public scheme, especially considering how much more of a return your average person gets on these plans compared to the average social security scheme, not to mention the profits of the investment firm and the increased profits from businesses with increased revenues due to the invested capital being put to use to produce profits....
Provided the retirement schemes are regulated but not smothered, run appropriately and transparently (such as the consumers and regulators having access to all figures), the government doesn't provide limited liabilities for the commercial entities (which
always leads to a change in the risk - such as the limiting of liabilities that lead to sub-prime loans and CDOs being attractive), interest rates accurately reflect the market and people who run investment firms can get real punishment for any fraud, coercion or negligence I think you'll have a much more efficient retirement scheme that is not some inevitable cost for taxpayers or even some save-as-you-go account that is sustainable, instead you have efficiently working capital in the private sector giving good returns and putting a solid capital cash-flow into the economy and you have PEOPLE who own a damn good chunk of the private sector in the long run.
And, curiously asking, what is wrong with the use of the word "Entitlement"? I use the word to refer to services that are legally owed to the persons in question by the state via the agreement of the voting public to be taxed, such as healthcare, primary/secondary education, roads, water, social security etc. If the public and the state have agreed to some tax in exchange for public services then they are entitled to them, thus it is an entitlement.
I really don't see what the problem is, my definition is perfectly reasonable.
Quote:I must be bonkers for being EXTREMELY skeptical of this hypothetical "win win win win win" situation.
Well given how poorly you represented my ideas in your response I'd say you're not understanding me. For instance you raised public healthcare as an issue when I'm talking about retirement schemes, I haven't said a thing about private healthcare in this entire conversation - I also never said a single thing about shutting down entitlements, It's simply irrelevant to the topic at hand - What I offered you was my solution to their problems long term, one of taking their disaster of a social security scheme and turning it into a system where the people receive back that mandatory 16% of their wages and invest some of that in the private sector, 4-6% will typically make them the same money on average. You'd still have to take care of the people who are currently retired because they are owed a retirement scheme by the government, they are "entitled" to it (any concerns with the term here?), hell, you could even take it from corporate income tax if you like, seeing as the 28% they aren't pumping into the social security means their costs drop, thus their income increases, meaning that money becomes reinvested or taxed as income.
As for the SS to investment transition, the government need only change the deal from this point on, honouring the deal it had with the people prior to this move by returning to them what they have contributed and stating from this point on that retirement will be their responsibility.
And the fact of Greece not having a tax on derivatives for Greek owned businesses that you so disliked becomes an immediate advantage to investors and retirement schemes under this scenario.
Quote:What about the loosers?
They've already lost mate, they're going to keep loosing until they make significant changes, one solution to which I've already explained.
void Wrote:I think ONE of the problems with Greece is their tax system/exemptions... if my numbers were correct, that is...but how can you say other countries have relatively the same tax system when me and you have both concluded that we cannot know for a fact at this moment what the Greek tax system even is?p
There are nations on either side and within those ranges, nations with what you would consider a 'worse' tax system such as New Zealand and nations with one you would consider better, such as France - Given that consideration I had no need to assume that one specific set of figures was true, made helpful considering those tax figures are in a relatively narrow range of possibilities, they're just common to developed nations.
Quote: Perhaps you could give me a list of such countries who mimic greece's tax systems ( and deductions as well) with examples and maybe you could convince me you are in the right direction.
The Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Turkey, Italy, Sweeden, France, Portugal - All have a similar range of brackets, similar ratio of corporate to income taxes and similar public sectors and similar public spending. You know which 3 are doing rather poorly right now correct? Greece, Portugal and to a lesser extent Spain.
Take for instance Portugal; "Fisheries and agriculture now account for about 4% of the GDP, down from approximately 25% in 1960, while still employing 13% of the labour force. On the other hand, the tertiary sector has grown, producing 66% of the GDP and providing jobs for 52% of the working population. The remaining 30% of the GDP is mainly produced by the building and energy sectors." - Yeah, 66% of GDP.... It's a recipe for disaster.
Spain is doing poorly more because of it's Housing Boom that mirrored and grew from the US one, it accounted for about 20% of their GDP from early 2000s through to 2008 and now 23% are unemployed, causing the massive deficit and the need for a bailout. They are much less similar to Greece than Portugal, their public spending was less and investment significantly higher, their productive sector would have kept them out of bad shape but they were sucked in by the phony US housing market.
And that I fell further illustrates my point, especially the contrast of Greece and Spain, both in a bad situation but one because it built it's economy on what was clearly the surface of a bubble and the other because it failed to invest enough at all, giving it no real way to satisfy the demands of the citizens aside from borrowing. This along side the nations doing relatively well with similar tax figures demonstrates that the fundamentals of the economy, the ratios of consumption and production and the structures of the investments (such as the bubble the Spaniards and Americans were caught up in) end up playing a much more significant role. When you compare that again to the countries with what you would seemingly consider a much worse tax system, such as New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, they are doing relatively well because of the structures of their investments and their strong productive sectors, not because they're generally taxed less.
