[civil] "Greece moves closer to eurozone exit after delaying €300m repayment to IMF "

[giblets]

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/busin..._for_work.html

Excellent reading if a bit dated (it is from 2010). Government workers who die can have their pensions passed on to unmarried daughters. Those daughters still shack up with guys and have kids but don't officially get married because they want to keep collecting their dead parents pensions for the rest of their lives. Relatives of workers of the state airline got to fly the world for free (luckily that company was finally privitized in 2008 and could finally get reformed). Fully paid goverent commissions to manage lakes which dried up in the 1930's, surely there is no need toan age a lake which hasn't existed for 80+ years?

That is just the start. Read the article.

About 40,000 women benefit from the allowance at an annual cost of around 550 million euros ($731.5 million Cdn.), according to economic website capital.gr.

One Greek newspaper estimated that committees employ more than 10,000 people and cost over 220 million euros ($292.6 million) a year.

The state owns 74 companies, mainly utilities and transport firms, many of which are overstaffed and loss-making, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The main rail company employs about 9,000 people and reported losses of 800 million euros ($1.06 billion) in 2008.

Budget woes have limited military procurements and the 2010 defence budget now stands at 6.7 billion euros ($8.91 billion).

GDP of Greece in 2010: ~226 billion euros
Pensions for daughters: .24% of GDP
Salaries for committee staff: .097% of GDP
Rail company losing up to 800 million euros a year: .35% of GDP

There's definitely some wasteful spending here but like you said it's a bit dated.

[Jon Miller]

JM, what you are suggesting, when you talk about primary surpluses (which means government income vs debts not counting payments or interest on the national debt), is that Greece just not pay it's national debt. Yes, if it didn't have to pay it's national debt then it would be in surplus but the reality is it does have to pay it's national debt thus it's problems.

Greece can't pay it's national debt.

The question is, do you want Greece to pay the maximum amount of the debt that it possibly can? If so, only take debt payments out of the primary surplus.

JM

[giblets]

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart...oyment-2011-11

Once you count everything the number of state sector workers in Greece is close to 30% whicheck is lower than countries like France but France doesn't have a debt crisis.

That's from 2011, while before the recession hit it was close to 20% of total employment.

[DinoDoc]

Greece can't pay it's national debt.

Then can it just default already and end this idiotic farce.

[Jon Miller]

Then can it just default already and end this idiotic farce.

I think it can't default in the EU.

JM

[giblets]

Was the other guy Krugman?

[Bereta_Eder]

yep. that's him krugman.

[C0ckney]

It is like you are illiterate. You are quoting the average of both public and private sector and I keep pointing out how in the public sector people can retire very early. 50 for women and 55 for men depending on which union they are a member of and how much political clout they have. Even your over all national average number of 61 is 7 ****ing years younger than in most of northern Europe. It is unfair and unsustainable to ask northern European taxpayers to foot the bill for such generous benefits. Greece needs to set 68 as the retirement age just like countries like Germany and Finland have.
.

what do you not understand? i have provided a graph from eurostat that shows the retirement ages across the EU. greece's is 61.7; this is higher than the EU average and higher than germany, france and italy; it is the same as finland. both germany and finland have a higher percentage of workers employed by the state, so this probably means that their public sector workers retire earlier or at the same age as greek public sector workers. here is the graph (yet) again. do try to read and understand it this time.



perhaps instead of pulling numbers out of your rear end, you could provide some evidence to back up your claims.

[C0ckney]

Non-religious europeans love the idea of taxing the Church.

I understand that it is a bigger problem there than in the US, but how much of the wealth and income is owned controlled by the church (percentage of GDP)?

the church is the second largest landowner in greece. estimates vary about the church's wealth and it isn't exactly keen to make the figures public, but most put it at between €7bn and €15bn. it currently pays 20% on its commercial revenue and about 5% on donations.

[Bereta_Eder]

the church is the second largest landowner in greece. estimates vary about the church's wealth and it isn't exactly keen to make the figures public, but most put it at between €7bn and €15bn. it currently pays 20% on its commercial revenue and about 5% on donations.

exactly. a very big issue since noone wants to "touch" the church. syriza has too many open fronts at present to touch on this one.
in due time.

they control all the old grandmas during the speech after sunday's mass. and they are a heck of a large voting percentage.

[C0ckney]

It does seem however, that Greece is still able to produce a primary surplus. I would imagine given the rest of your post that you are advocating this surplus be designated for economic stimulation as opposed to debt reduction. Not sure why a little of both wouldn't be a good idea??

i think the debt is unpayable and that greece should default. it should use its surplus to stimulate growth as far as possible.

I would really need to see the participation rates of earners to really see if there was a correlation. One would assume, however, that as the economy shrunk/tightened that the participation rate of people actually paying their taxes would have shrunk at an even greater rate than the economy did. These uncollected taxes look like they could be a significant issue in meeting debt service or economic stimulus.

tax evasion in greece is certainly a problem. its black market represents just under 25% of GDP, which is far higher than countries like germany (15%), but actually lower than the baltic states (between 26-29%). however, a lot of this can be put down to the structure of the greek economy, rather than, as it's often portrayed, some kind of peculiarly greek moral failing. 32% of greeks are self-employed, compared to an EU average of 15%. it's clear that self-employment encourages tax evasion.

It is hard to imagine that quote in any kind of capitalistic context! I believe that you should not shift the entire burden of taxes to landowners. Two reasons...1.) It simply allows the land owner's to pass the tax on to their renters/lessors. In the case of individuals, it may make housing prohibitively expensive...particularly if they are out of work. In the case of Company's, it is a disincentive to locate new facilities in Greece. and 2.) Governments are usually more responsive when more people share the tax burden. To remove all non-land owner's from the roles would lessen their accountability for supporting various government spending.

well what i mean is that my preferred solution for economic and social problems is to dismantle the capitalist system and the state that protects it. however, i recognise that until more people can be convinced that this is the way forward, we will have to start from where we are now, that is to say, from within a capitalist context.

a land value tax, levied on the rental value of land, wouldn't raise land prices. if something whose supply is fixed (like land) is taxed, its selling price will not increase. it would, however, make certain financial services connected to land, i.e. a lot of what banks do, impossible. currently landowners can leave land idle and face no penalty or onus. with a land value tax they would be forced to either pay tax for keeping the land idle, bring it into use, or sell it to someone who would. this would make the land market more efficient, bring idle and underused land back into use and discourage damaging speculation through land-banking; thus it would lower land prices, and therefore rents, over time.

the idea of a land value is that it would replace taxes on labour and capital. if one taxes something, one gets less of it. yet you can't have less land; the amount of land is completely static and stable. so by removing the taxes on labour and capital more of these will be employed and therefore the amount of economic activity will increase. land itself, which produces noting without capital and labour, will no longer be seen as an attractive investment, encouraging capital to be used in the production of goods and the provision of services; in other words, in satisfying human needs and wants.

a land value tax is also very hard to evade. one can move money overseas or one can hide it under one's mattress; one can't do either of those things with land. land values are public information and are difficult to manipulate, unlike say, sales figures.

As far as adding "The Church" to the tax roles...this would depend on the role "the church" plays in philanthropic activities. Many churches spend a large percentage of their contributions on this and usually distribute it with volunteer workers. Not sure if this is the context you are talking about and if the amount "the church" spends on these kinds of activities is out of line. Certainly some accountability for tax free status would be a minimum.

Military spending is problematic as Greece is a NATO member and is not currently spending the 2% "suggested" amount. However, I am sure there are opportunities to look at specializing in some areas and allowing the collective defense posture to pick up on some areas that could be eliminated. I would advocate efficiency over just sweeping cuts.

according to the world bank, greece (as of 2013) spends 2.5% of GDP on its military. this is very high compared to other EU states and i think there's certainly some room for cuts, even if that only brings it down to the 'recommended' level.

the church owns a lot of property (see my reply to JM), and i don't see why it should be exempt from paying its share.

I don't really disagree with anything here at all. I do still believe that a case by case analysis by the Greeks on where they can increase competitiveness through sale of government owned corporations is warranted. However, I believe that this is the case everywhere...not just Greece.

[giblets]

What percentage of GDP do you think goes into land rents?

[C0ckney]

do you mean that is paid in rents, or the amount that goes into land values?

[giblets]

Including imputed rents

[Jon Miller]

the church is the second largest landowner in greece. estimates vary about the church's wealth and it isn't exactly keen to make the figures public, but most put it at between €7bn and €15bn. it currently pays 20% on its commercial revenue and about 5% on donations.

Is 20% seems reasonable, even a bit more would be fine. (whatever is in line with normal businesses)

If anything, 5% on donations is too much.

Paying taxes on something which doesn't provide income (those who seem to argue that churches should pay taxes on the cathedrals/etc that they can't even upkeep anymore) or doesn't provide profit seems defeating.

So basically, it seems to me that it is paying it's share and only isn't if you have something against churches (it obviously doesn't make enough income to have built churches in such real-estate places now).

Basically it just seems to be something that those who want to destroy the institutional church want and not something that would fix the tax situation or be very fair...

JM