How amusing. We left-wingers are annoyed by the right-wing being ready to destroy the whole state income just to have their "tax cuts" because taxes are evil and immoral and should be diminished as much as possible. When they do not invest in fiscal lawyer to try to exploit any possible legal glitch in order to minimize taxation. As far as I know, taxes are more respected (as a society's core mechanism, a nation's blood system) by the left wing than the right wing, if you wish to go that way. But yeah, go neoliberal "civism".

AND I am merely talking of "functional" countries here, that is, states that haven't been invented in 1830 after 4 centuries of foreign occupation, built as an artificial foreign monarchy, maintained (largely by the west) as a century of dictatorships (until the 1970s), and lead even further by government that kept displaying in huge public scandals the way they were 1° appropriating for their own profit most of the public funds, 2° clealy not caring one bit about the laws they expected the rest of the population to follow (a bit like Germany in the EU by the way, shall we remind you).

No, we are not talking of Greece, but of countries where History should make the values of trusting and cooperating with the state would be much easier to endorce. Countries where "The State" is still described as The Baddie in political discourses that define taxation as the worst horror imposed on mankind. In whose discourses, already ?

Oh yeah, in the discourses of those who consider greeks as immoral because of not showing good will when it comes to taxation.

And no, the pauperization of the greek population did not make taxes more likely to be paid, and the fact that shipping companies are protected from taxation by the constitution which was defined by the (west-supported) 67-74 military dictatorship, do not make the matter easier. On the plus side, 2/3rd of Greeks have their taxes directly collected at the source, leaving only 1/3rd of the population amongst which some can consider cheating. But yeah, Greeks are an evil species, so, let's not make things more complicated than needed.

You still have issues with that ?

First of all, we call this "class racism". It means the hatred of a certain social class (rich hating the poor, poor hating the rich, aristocrats hating bourgeois, etc), along with the explicit or implicit "racialization" of it (the determinism and essentialism of "they belong to this class therefore they think like that") that denies the inner oppositions. That's a fundation of social darwinism, of neoliberal pseudo-moralism (the poor are poor because of personality defects), and eugenism. But people like Krugman, Friedman, Stiglitz, Madelin, etc, belong to the same class. Varoufakis and Schäuble belong to the same class (although they don't use the exact same class markers -formal tie versus expensive hype fashion- and do certainly not express the same "class racism", as I don't suppose Schäuble often gets his drinks in the local eksarhia's bars). Actually, political oppositions are often quite independant from "classes" even though political discourses often try to revendicate them as some front identity - leading to some weird "class-traitor" accusations at times, and to some downright fabricated images (billionaires trying to have working classes "identify" with the party they've founded).

But then you have your indy going "Nazis, I hate those guys". Or me going "UDC, I hate those guys" or "FN, I hate those guys", or everybody here going "Golden Dawn, I hate those guys", or people going "Commies, I hate those guys" or "leftists, I hate those guys", or "democrats, I hate those guys", or "syriza, I hate those guys", etc. Beyond the different validity of these stances, at least they mean something, in the sense that these hatreds are based on actual opinions and ideologies and moral values of their targets. Disliking someone because he does or thinks this or that is different from disliking him because he has this passport or that skin colour or this wealth. Disliking a forumgoes because of his posts (his worldview, or his scam/trolling) is one thing, disliking him because of his "from" line or his number of owned gog games is another thing.

Do you get this distinction ? The muderous cynical assholes who are instrumentalizing the Greece ordeals in order to push their extremist neoliberal ideology onto it and/or crucify it as an exemple for any other european revolt againt neoliberal dogmas are a category of assholes which is independant from class and nationality. Many people in Germany are critical of the German state, many people in Greece are licking Merkel's toes from day one. And their supporting voters have very different backgrounds. "Class", like "nationality", like "religion", does not cover this category - they are categories that say nothing on the human, moral quality of an individual. Just like hair colour says nothing about the shoes model. Kicking a dog says something on the attitudes towards a dog, and so does the Dogkickers X-treme membership.

As long as people can't make the distinction, then angers can be hijacked and channeled towards irrelevant categories. And that's a major device of political manipulation.

Accuse me of polarization instead. My level of verbal and emotional (deshumanizing) violence is matching the (deshumanizing) violence inflicted on Greece, but you cannot accuse me of broadening the targets (my throat is currently sour for having shouted too much, yesterday, against people from "my side" who were stupidly drifting towards germanophobia). I'm currently psychologically ripe for eviscerating some decision-makers (which is an issue in itself), but not based on their passports or bank account (that would be a different psychological issue).

I'm not done with my chat with myself. I used to be merely euro-skeptic (or euro-indifferent), and I am only turning to categorically anti-euro since yesterday.

(and no, not because "human rights are the worst thing ever", as seems to be the main drive of most anti-euro currents nowadays)

I understand what you are saying but... still it doesn't make sense. It doesn't explain why these electorates are so strongly attached to the euro.

If Greek stays with the euro it will only be better off if others are throwing quite large amounts of money towards it because it will take much longer to regain the economic strength without devaluation. Really large amounts of money are not very likely. So why is the prospect of further suffering so much more popular amongst the electorate?

On the other hand for Germans it's exactly the same way. If the Greek economy is not recovering they will need to pour money there for a much longer time, although not all at once but some billions every year and in the end it will end up to a much larger pile. Can't they see that this is the worse option? They cannot really be willing to accept even higher amounts in the future just because the amount they would loose now in a default is really, really high.

In short: a recovery of the Greek economy now is strongly desired and an own currency plus devaluation could help a lot there. Proposing this could be a win-win situation for everyone involved. An euro exit and debt default might not be a thing to blame but to praise.

So by not pursueing the idea of a devaluating currency for Greece, all involved electorates seem to act somewhat unreasonable and against their own best interests.
But that's the case in every possible scenario. Part of the debt has to be written off. The advantage of a default would be that a primary surplus is no longer needed. But yeah, switching currency seems to be impossible without chaos. But maybe if there is chaos already one would find the costs for switching much less.

So debt has to be written off anyway. It's also roughly clear how much. The worse the the Greek economy develops in the next years, the more debt has to be written off. So in principle everyone should have a high interest in supporting it. But they don't. So what's wrong?

For example a temporary exit of the euro and a simultaneous debt cut would be fine with me.

The BBC's Robert Peston has an interesting take on the temporary exit, and the ramifications of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33497877

I think I owe you an apology. Sorry if anything I said offended you. I often overshoot in the heat of discussions.

By the way I would be interested in discussing possible alternatives. How do you think an institution like the IMF should work? Should it be like an insurance company that just tries to use the money of its members most efficiently? Which policies should it favor? Should it be a charity organization instead? What should be the goals of a successful rescue mission? How much cooperation of the country in need is necessary? How should the piling-up costs be distributed?

And: wouldn't it be the best (not for Greece but for the next ones) if we wouldn't come into these situations in the first place? A universal debt lock maybe. What if no country would do deficit spending for a longer period but would only spend what it takes in (on average over a business cycle)? (It would not prevent Ireland and Spain type of crises, there you would rather need better banking regulations.)

So for the future, constitutional debt locks micht be an important safety measure. However they must not prohibit anti-cyclical spending. But this is another topic. The EU managed to spend cyclical even without debt locks.

Probably it would have helped, if in Greece between 2000 and 2007 people would have demonstrated against too much spending and for higher taxes (which would be good Keynesian policy). But this is not what people usually do. As long as the money comes in many seem to be able to tolerate Laissez-faire capitalism quite well. This is all a bit unsatisfying. The better way out seems to be constitutional debt locks with short term flexibility.

In all this what I can not fathom is why countries with problems in the Euro are so attached to the Euro.. Euro Zone and European Union are 2 different things, completely, and utterly different. Literally all they'd lose is access to certain safety nets for banks and a few more safety nets for finance problems. And access to a currency that isn't in freefall compared to the $ and priced low enough to be nice for exports... sure...

But is that worth the price of making your own population suffer? Shouldn't it be the job of the people and the gov to fight for an own currency, at least temporary? The countries that are not Germany need to reform themselves to become competitive, while Germany needs to raise wages and spend money, in order to become less export dependent.

I feel like this is more about keeping face...

You seem to be confusing "write-off" in the colloquial sense with "write-off" in the international financing sense. Greece being completely unable to pay its debts may result in the creditors "writing off" the debt in the sense that they no longer expect to ever be able to collect on it, but this does not mean that the debt has officially been forgiven in the sense that the creditors remove it from the balance sheets. The importance of this distinction is that as long as the debt officially remains on the balance sheets it prevents Greece from being able to access international equity markets- in other words they can't borrow money from outside their country. This makes sense, since if a country hasn't repaid the debts it's previously owed there's no reason to expect it to repay any new debts it takes.

Official debt forgiveness typically happens once a country undergoes enough of a transformation that both the leadership and the will of the populace are viewed as being significantly different from the leadership and the will of the populace that got themselves into the initial debt. At this point it can be viewed as no longer productive to saddle what is effectively a different country with the debt that the previous country accumulated, so the debt is forgiven and pretty much everyone starts fresh. Basically a country in default needs to get itself back on its feet using only its own means before official debt forgiveness is an option. This is because to do otherwise simply creates too much of a perverse incentive for countries to default on their debts (which would in turn have a massive negative impact on the international equity markets, making it extremely difficult for any but the most fiscally responsible nations to borrow money).

Greece (like Turkey) is on the "edge" of geographical Europe. But was constructed in the 19th century in opposition to the "east" (the muslim ottoman empire), in a natonal project supported by european powers who were seeing in Greece the roots of Europe and enlightenment (neo-Hellenism was the big fashion back then). So, "being Europe" as opposed to "being Eastern" is a big thing in the greek identity (in most contexts - actually it's more ambivalent). The greek/turkey opposition has been exacerbating this for a long time, as nationalist discourses insist a lot on some "western modernity versus eastern obscurantism" dichotomy. So, as the EU hijacks the notion of Europe (with formulations such as "joining/exiting europe", as if Switzerland was in Asia or something), most greeks would live the exit as being thrown back in the same "eastern" category that they used to distinguish the "evil backwards turks". If you can imagine the symbolism at stake, here...

Plus, the strong (temporary if survived but prohibitively costly) social collapse of the transition. Plus the fear of a Turkey invasion once Greece ceases to represent "Europe" (in reality, the turkish parliament has been discussing the possibiity to bail out Greece out of solidarity, lately).

Once again, a lot of other factors than finance are at stake, and determine people's positions.

__
(and yes, if Turkey had had the time to join the EU before this crisis, things would have looked much more funny)

true, freelancers can tax-evade much, but why do people like insurance consultants (especially in big companies) and the sort must be fucked like that. They cannot tax-evade anything since their income is strictly defined and given directlly from their company to their bank accounts. I agree that one freelancer that sells shoes can tax-evade pretty easy, but why do those 2 different categories have to be put in the same taxing category?

You misunderstand me. My point was that the taxes levied against freelancers are unjust across most of the EU (and most of the world). All freelancers tax avoid not because it is naughty, but because it is necessary to make the career viable. It is also, legal - avoidance is legal, evasion is not. However a lot of the numbers chucked at Greece suggests that this avoidance is unique to that country. It is not, as I said, all freelancers in the UK similarly avoid tax.

Good article. Yes, a collection rate of 10% would be ridiculously extreme and I would be mighty suspicious of that too. The $86 billion is not just from one year though, it is the accumulation of was owed at the end of 2014, probably mostly from 2009-2014. I also would have thought certain areas in Eastern Europe would have at least as much tax evasion because of business done under the table and not very strict collection, but they don't seem to be in as much financial trouble.

Here is the article the number came from : http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-struggles-to-get-citizens-to-pay-their-taxes-1424867495 . I find that the Wall Street Journal is usually a very good source for financial matters.
Also another article without the exact number, but talking about how the % uncollected taxes is a significant part of the deficit: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-greeces-tsipras-needs-a-tax-collector/

In any event, the articles I've read combined with comments from Epitaph666 make me think the Greek tax system is definitely part of the problem and needs an overhaul.

No-one doubts that. However your figures are (as you said) based on historic tax debts, that (as the article points out) are accounting points rather than actual relevant figures. That said, it's a hell of a big accounting failure, but I don't think that $86bn would stand scrutiny.

Brussels negociations observers :

https://twitter.com/LondonerVince/status/620300491981918212

https://twitter.com/traynorbrussels/status/620295106092883968

https://twitter.com/OwenCallan/status/620298293432741888

https://twitter.com/paulxharris/status/620300776443777024

Basically, it is a charade. The purpose is not where it is claimed.

https://twitter.com/WhelanKarl/status/620285111314067456

Easy there mate :) It was just a friendly jab...

I still have a beef with you, but it's not particularly along those lines; of thinking you are some actual example of an Xism. As you yourself indicated it has more to do with your approach, and how unproductive I consider it (you call it polarizing, I'd rather say intolerant, or unjustified). But let's not reopen that here, I'll probably and sadly piss you off enough with what I'm writing below.


So let me say two things. First one regarding your chat with yourself. I likewise have several ongoing chats with myself, yet I often find externalizing them is what helps progress them. Certainly my inner world is so more limited than the whole of humanity I can interact with. Still, as you say this is such a recent change in your attitude towards the EU, I agree you should probably stew on it a while longer and see where you are in a couple of weeks or so.


Secondly, on distinctions of hatred. Which is my read regarding your question I left in the quote. A very interesting question s it provides me a rant opportunity. :) My answer is that I find the objective consequences much more relevant than the intents Telika. In a way, to the hateful intent and those distinctions about its target (you seem to hinge so much on whether the hated attribute is chosen/ideological/behavioral versus inherent/biological/inherited) I just want to say: so what? and accuse you of discussing and being interested in the sex of angels. In fact, from your contributions to this thread, that is my main beef with you. I find your concern over dynamics of othering is blinding you to objective and extremely relevant differences in consequences and in responsibility. We covered some of this ground in that other thread about tolerance, and your reaction to my raising such different ethical axis as potential guidelines was kind of vitriolic...

So to play devil's advocate and make the distinction I consider more important even more visible: Those assholes you hate... and by the way, just as show of good faith, let me be explicit that yes, I do see and know that I exaggerated/generalized their class status to make a point - the same point that Trilarion tried to make with an even wider generalization. Anyway, those assholes you are so upset with, due to their political "manipulation", their intent might be completely pure. Just like the state harming a citizen serves several purposes: from retribution to deterrence via containment, so the EU assholes harming Greece may be perfectly moral and squeaky clean souls. It's a matter of perspective.

And even if we grant the intent is sadistic or something of the sort (though really, you truly don't see the othering dynamics at play in that judgement / prejudice? groups are groups afterall...), what will the actual consequences be? Are you so sure what the EU want isn't the best for Greece? Remember that in human actions very rarely are things absolute. Bad is better than terrible. That's a whole other discussion, but since I'm mostly concerned with moral aspects, let me jump to the third leg other than intent and consequence, which is capability.

The Greek populus still has the power/ability/agency to accept or not whatever the EU wants it to do. The EU will not invade Greece with its almost non existent armies, over balkan geography no less, to impose some ultimatum. Nor send its almost non existent navies to do shore bombardment and force a regime change. Ergo, realistically speaking, Greek acceptance or rejection of terms (past, present and future) comes with shared responsibility for outcomes, because there is no actual imposition through physical violence - and no Telika, I don't and will never consider choices of the lesser evil due to economical lack of power as equivalent to actual physical coercion, such as slavery - to me such distinctions based on violence and coercion are what human dignity is based on. One can always say no. Human dignity's price is blood - nothing else. If you are not willing to die for your dignity, you have already lost it. If you are not willing to affirm human dignity in the face of human death, you have already given it up imo. It's not really such a high bar this... afterall, we will all experience it some day. The great equalizer and all that jazz.

So, who is reducing the dignity of the Greek people? The ones saying: you helped make the bed, so let's lie on it, or the ones saying: it's not your fault, nothing you did or didn't do actually mattered. Maybe both heh? But the first in a material sphere, whereas the second in an agency sphere. Guess which one I care the most about in this particular? I don't particularly want to punish anyone for their mistakes, but I think it's much worse to let mistakes go unpunished - in fact that de-responsibilization is what I consider at root of the worldwide mess we are in. And that's across classes and races.

I cant seem to buy this book on Amazon, maybe its a copyright restriction or something, but the more I read up on it the more disillusioned I become :

A whole island pretending to be blind to get benefits, 8,500 pensioners who faked being aged over 100 and lawyers who claim to earn just €12,000: New book reveals how Greeks cheated THEMSELVES into ruin


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3148451/A-island-pretending-blind-benefits-8-500-pensioners-faked-aged-100-lawyers-claim-earn-just-12-000-New-book-reveals-Greeks-cheated-ruin.html

Okay, so default is probably the wrong word and should be replaced by debt cut.

What I mean is that Greece cannot pay back the whole debt no matter which currency they live in and no matter about the conversion rate of this currency and therefore debt forgiveness is an imperative. It must happen at some point and it must be appropriate in several senses.

For the moment let's suppose this would be dealt with. The only thing that remains then is the future competitiveness of Greece which must be as high as to not pile up any more debt because as you said already they'll hardly get new money from the market.

And with a weaker currency they simply can get competitive against other countries while with the euro they can't. Therefore the current plan is wrong. Very inhomogenous areas should either be politically united or have different currencies.

And going back to the debt cut. It must come for sure but it may not need to be decided today. You could still negotiate this in the coming months if only the Greek economy is saved now and is put on a path to growth for the future.

So to say again but with different words: An ordered euro exit desired by both, Greece and EU, immediate help paying the debt and the assurance that there will be an debt cut following certain principles like growth of the economy, limiting of the unemployment, ... within the next time, that might be the best solution. Of course if they want they can include a debt cut if they are able to get it working today.

Solutions with Greece in the euro will be extremely likely to either fail to restart the Greek economy or will fail to reduce the future debt/deficit. So these options are probably doomed, I guess. Or what do you think?

P.S.: Maybe one last sentece. The UK has its own currency and nobody thinks the less of them for it. The Dutch have the euro and it's fine too. And so: why shouldn't a country use the currency which is most useful for it. And: If Greece stays in the euro I predict now that the situation won't get better for a very long time.