dick1982: damn. who the heck downrated you? you make perfect sense!
There's a bunch of Der Bild subscribers, IMF-level neoliberal extremists, "
i am not racist but greeks are corrupt people", and other Blocher fanboys crawling from under a rock to under another, around here. Better have them shamefully hammering the minus button from under their table than inflict us their stereotypical drivel to read...
Telika: ...Taxing vulnerable people to death doesn't harm the export industry, so, why question the targets. Damn communists, and all. Really, the ideology of social darwinism in all its splendor. I guess these super-rich shipping company owners would have been safe for quite a while...
Trilarion: This is only one side of the story. Everyone who wants to spend some money should explain where it should come from, otherwise this would be quite dishonest, wouldn't it?
Let's say the goal is to
- support the poor and
- get the economy going (especially the export)
You would not
- tax the poor nor
- tax the income (also corporations income) except for really high incomes
But in order to balance your budget you would then have to
- cut expenses for all but the poor (like pensions above a certain level) and
- tax the rich (property tax, wealth tax) and
- fight corruption like there is no tomorrow
So: cut expenses for all but the poor and tax the rich and fight corruption but save the poor and the incomes except for the really high incomes.
I'm not firm with what exactly Syriza and Anel implemented of this since january - I only know of the Thessaloniki Programme of Syriza from 2014 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessaloniki_Programme or
http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=631486) which rather asked for a lot of money for spending on the welfare state (not exactly only the poor). Extremely unbalanced programme and would probably never work.
As I mentionned earlier in the thread, the ever super-reliable Varoufakis
had already mentionned that this programme was worthless. Quote :
Should we be afraid of Syriza’s ‘ultra-leftism’? My answer is a resounding No. I recommend that (even those who have Greek amongst their languages) you do not read their manifesto. It is not worth the paper it is written on. While replete with good intentions, it is hort on detail, full of promises that cannot, and will not be fulfilled (the greatest one is that austerity will be cancelled), a hotchpotch of policies that are neither here nor there. Just ignore it. Syriza is a party that had to progress, within weeks, from a fringe political agglomeration struggling to get into Parliament (at around the 4% mark) to a major party that may have to form government in a few short weeks. It is, in important ways, a ‘work in progress’; and so is its unappetising Manifesto.
[EDIT - No, wait, that was about a different manifesto.
Possibly that creepy original one. The thessaloniki thingy is still an improvement...]
That being said, I have to point out that your own "spare the poor tax the rich" suggestion goes very much against the neoliberal doctrine (which the IMF and the EU attempts to impose on Greece). The very pro-european very ultraliberal New Democracy and its militants were refusing to tax the ultra-rich shipowners out of feer of having them move to (another) fiscal paradise. This rationale, as showed in the IMF diktat (also illustrated by the swiss lump-sum taxation) doesn't get less applied the richer the individual/corporation. On the contrary, it is a logic that increasingly shields from taxation the highest fortunes. With the consequences of leaving only the poor and the downward-spiralling ex-middle classes to target for state revenues. With the consequences you know in terms of pauperization, inequality increases, mass despair (and government delegitimation and even taxation delegitimation), etc. But hey, taxes would de-motivate the rich. Because, see, the ultra-rich greek shipowners are all patriotically motivated when it comes to supporting ultranationalist groups such as the Golden Dawn (who also militate against shipowners taxation), but, when it comes to touching their own obscene mountains of dough...
You can argue that, beyond ideological rationalization, there is the mere issue of (aggravated) corruption - and we are not talking "greek corruption" here, but of political/industrial alliances and clientelisms that are just as scandalous in France or Germany. The bonds between politicians and industrials (who are, in Greece, conveniently enough, also the mass media owners) mean both financial and mediatic support for a party and taxation gifts for the industrials in return, so, the impact on policies and discourses is to be expected. However, this aspect is mostly invisible to the street-level militants, who just sprout out these rationalizations with genuine conviction. It's a structuring worldview.
That being said, there is yet another aspect to take in consideration, with the current IMF/EU diktats (or their passive "
we expect sound propositions from Greece and by sound we mean ours" versions). They
may be deliberately exaggerated, in order to either prevent an agreement or force Syriza to accept harsher austerity measures than N.D., and in both cases topple this government and replace it with either the older lapdogs (Samaras' gang) or the newly manufactured ones (Potami). There are a few elements that seem to hint at this, such as some u-turns on the EU side (the unannounced last-minute switching of a soon-to-be-signed moscovici agreement for an out-of-the-blue unacceptable dijsselbloem proposition), the
self-fulfilling bank run prophecy, the sudden focus on military cuts (opposite to what was being asked till then, but conveniently inconvenient for the Syriza/Anel alliance), and some behind-curtains discussions in Bruxelles with ND, Pasok and Potami representants during the very peak of the Syriza negociations. From the very start, Syriza was (understandably) very unwelcome to the eurogroup discussions, and a more complacent government was wished. The current contents of the EU propositions may very well be solely designed to ensure that the "left-wing parenthesis" (as greek conservatives call it) gets closed soon enough. In that case, their extremism may not be directly representative of the actual policies that the EU intends to implement in Greece...
Too many bluff layers, too many backstage strategies. Too many untold motives, framed under too many dishonest presentations (saint Junker
generously "offering" to Greece 35 billion euros they were already entitled to, etc). The situation again is far more complex than medias and political reductionnist narratives make it sound like.
I'm only slightly shocked by how the most radical neoliberal doctrine can become some unquestionned (even sometimes "unpolitical") "common sense" to many people, and can be instrumentalized in this Greece/Eurozone armwrestling. As far as I'm concerned, the real issues in these negociations are less about the agreement draft's contents than about the underlying geopolitical strategies and the different "shared cultures" (beliefs, worldviews, intents and self-legitimations) driving the different actors. And these are not provided at any explicit level, as public statements are mere rhetorical manipulative tools, on all sides.
I'm just sorry for the public who takes them at face value (and end up with a basic "tsk, these greeks!" understanding of the situation). But to be honest, we are condemned to think through what is left at our disposal...
