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Post 0

Monday, May 3, 2010 - 4:42pmSanction this postReply
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Here is the outline of terms & conditions:

The austerity plan aims to achieve fresh budget cuts of 30bn euros over three years - with the goal of cutting Greece's public deficit to less than 3% of GDP by 2014. It currently stands at 13.6%.

Measures include:
  • Scrapping bonus payments for public sector workers
  • Capping annual holiday bonuses and axing them for higher earners
  • Banning increases in public sector salaries and pensions for at least three years
  • Increasing VAT from 21% to 23%
  • Raising taxes on fuel, alcohol and tobacco by 10%
  • Taxing illegal construction
What's so ironic that it is funny is when you combine this with other articles. In one, it is discovered that a 'super-majority' (> two-thirds) of German "citizen-subjects" didn't want a national bail-out of Greece. That just drips with hypocrisy!:
Recent opinion polls have shown that over two-thirds of the German public are against taxpayer money going to Greece.
--http://german-info.com/press_shownews.php?pos=European_Union&pid=2485

And, just when you thought that that was as much irony/hypocrisy as one could handle, a little searching revealed to me that a 'super-majority' of Greek "citizen-subjects" won't accept the terms and conditions!:

Two-thirds of Greeks disapprove of the way the government is handling the crisis, according to a nationwide Public Issue poll for Skai media group released today. The country’s biggest union pledged “dynamic” resistance to any cuts in pensions.
--http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-16/eu-tells-greece-to-brace-for-imf-s-bailout-terms-update1-.html

You gotta' love socialism/cannibalism, don't you? Go ... tribe! Go ... tribe! Go ... tribe! ... No, wait ... My tribe over yours! [yea] My tribe over yours! My tribe uber alles!

Ed


Post 1

Monday, May 3, 2010 - 5:28pmSanction this postReply
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What?

"Taxing illegal construction"

Cripe, why stop there? Try taxing bounced checks, robberies, and public drunkenness while you're at it.

Geesh.


Post 2

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 9:56amSanction this postReply
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Illegal construction happens all of the time because the laws governing constructions are draconian, and land records are a complete mess. The government has not computerized system for researching land titles. And then it's good luck finding the appropriate documentation to start construction. Then you have to deal with bribing a building inspector to let him build. On top of all that, policing for illegal construction is almost non-existent because of how incompetent of a government they have there.

It's no wonder illegal construction happens all of the time. Legal construction is near impossible.

Post 3

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 4:16pmSanction this postReply
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John,

I hope you plan to write an article after your trip. Pleeeeeze?


Post 4

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 4:52pmSanction this postReply
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Assuming I can actually get there if the damn Airport workers don't go on strike. What a mess!

Post 5

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - 4:41amSanction this postReply
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I guess this is a figurative version of "being done Greek style."

Post 6

Thursday, May 6, 2010 - 5:45amSanction this postReply
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My point in listing the terms and conditions was to show that half of them demanded that Greece be less tribalist/socialist.

Socialism forms two tiers in a society: the rulers and the people. These then become two classes: the privileged and the sacrificing. Half of the terms and conditions were aimed at stopping the socialist "rape" of the public of Greece.

Here is an example:

"Banning increases in public sector salaries and pensions for at least three years"

Ed

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Post 7

Thursday, May 6, 2010 - 7:26amSanction this postReply
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The political struggle just seems so ... inevitable. Unresolvable. On rails. Intractable.

There is always a top half and a bottom half, no matter what some would like to think about a classless society, equality, egalitarianism, or other puddingheaded nonsense. The top half is mostly happy with the status quo, the bottom half not so much. Lather, rinse, repeat, political struggle without end.

The following was triggered from questions after my favorite economic talk of all time, by Dr. Laura D'Andrea Tyson, in Nove 1997 at UCal Berkley. I bought the tape long ago from C-Span, today its free on line at their new site that Ted posted a while back. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/95468-1 (if server is not too busy...)

The question was an off-the0cuff comment about income disparity in America. The comment/complaint was that the income ratio of the top earning quintile to the lowest earning quintile in America was about "8 or 9 to 1."

You need a grasp of Jr. High Math to understand what I'm about to say, and yet... this was a UCal/Berkley in 1997.

Imagine if you allow incomes to vary at all in a population. (Imagine that! What a stunning example of freedom.) So, my 17 year old special needs son might get paid less than me, depending on what he ends up doing for a living. But, ditto the folks who end up spread all over the academic spectrum when they struggle unequally through their schooling. I'm just not paying the guy that got all F's the same as the guy who sailed through with straight A's, if the guys with the F's is sorting mail in the mail room and the guy with the A's is running the international division. Call me a fascist, call me an elitist, but buy a clue.

So, incomes vary. But, let's cave in to our tribal schadenfreud One Pie WOrld tendencies, and limit MAX_INCOME to some 'fair' number. Pick any number you want, not like the American Economies where there is no such upper limit. I'll wait while you pick a numnber.

Call it MAX_INCOME.

Now, build 'fair' world, and let incomes vary totally rendomly and fairly uniformly, from 0 to MAX_INCOME. Arrange things so that there are the same number of people earning every level of income from 0 to MAX_INCOME.

A perfectly uniform distribution of incomes, from 0 to MAX_INCOME. A straight line. Same number of people earning 0, 1, 2, 3, .... all the way up to MAX_INCOME per year.

Finally, Social Justice Nirvana, right? That was a lot of coercion to make all that happen,but it was worth it, right?


Now, lets go get the Berkloid, and check the ratio of incomes between the uppper and lower quintiles.

The upper quintile earns from 80% MAX_INCOME to 100% MAX_INCOME, with an average income of 90% MAX_INCOME.

The lower quintile earns from 0% MAX_INCOME to 20% MAX_INCOME, with an average income of 10% MAX_INCOME.

The quintile ratio of incomes is not abotu 8 or 9 to 1, but exactly 9:1.


D'OH! What happened to Social Justice? Where did it go?

We did all the right things. We limited MAX_INCOME.

We made sure there was a perfectly uniform distribution of incomes among The People.

We did everything in the spirit of Equality, except one thing: we allowed incomes to vary.

Too much freedom. The only way to fix the Berkloids's complaint is to apply more coercion, eventually, to INCOME=CONSTANT. That is, do not allow incomes to vary at all.

The villian at work here is The Tyranny of Magnitude, and the Left has put that Viliian to work for them, in order to try and put the Right on a never going to end treadmill of manufactured guilt.

If you really want to see some scary ratios of non-existing group guilt, do the math for decimiles. (let's see... 95%/5% = 19:1!)

Well, fuck that, just do the math.

Then ask yourself, what is it that any of us ever does in our life as a member of a quintile? Or decimile?

Or even, top half or bottom half?

regards,
Fred


PS: What organ do we use to sense the actual quintile ratio of incomes in our economies?

There is no such organ. The entire political struggle is defined by angsting over dem whats gots more dem me.

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 5/06, 7:38am)


Post 8

Thursday, May 6, 2010 - 8:55amSanction this postReply
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Well said, Fred. And in the end the "tribal schadenfreud" is still there after the angry Berkloids get to INCOME=CONSTANT. It is just temporarily without as specific a target. But never fear, they will just focus on the unfairness of the wide distribution of intelligence. Since that isn't distributable, those at the top will have to be 'modified' to achieve social justice.

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Post 9

Thursday, May 6, 2010 - 4:15pmSanction this postReply
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Hi Ed, the terms and conditions for stopping or mitigating socialism in Greece are just token gestures. There's isn't much attention paid to exactly why so many Greeks are employed by the government (I've heard estimates anywhere between 10 to 30% of the population, the government doesn't even know precisely how many people it employs). The university system is state run and a monopoly, same goes with all hospitals. All doctors are government workers. The airports are all entirely state run. There's a state run television station (although at least there private competition is allowed). The state also pays welfare to all priests, so they are essentially government workers. Up until last year when the government sold it, it also ran the country's national airlines "Olympic Airlines", even though it's now privatized, I believe there are still left over pension obligations the state has to pay. There are also state owned banks (private banks are allowed as well)

Actually.....this doesn't sound all that different from our economy. I guess we're well on our way to being the next Greece.

Post 10

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 2:35amSanction this postReply
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Greeks been through democracy, Romans, Byzantine, Turks, and now semi-socialism. Governments come and go, but roads and gardens stay. They put into good use whatever money comes their way - be it from Romans or European Union. The other day we've seen the workers installing marble (!) walkways in Naoussa town center on Paros island. Money problems or not - who is going to come and uninstall that walkway?

Today we found the place so idyllic that I am not telling you where it is - cheap, with sea view and perfect empty beach. Crisis - what crisis?

Post 11

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 1:33pmSanction this postReply
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John,

All doctors are government workers.
Did I ever tell you about the time I was stitched up by a doctor in Greece (actually, by his 8 year-old son!)?

Ed
[I'm not kidding (though it makes me sound like Colonel Braggstaff -- from the Saturday morning cartoons I watched in the 1970's)]


Post 12

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 3:02pmSanction this postReply
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LOL, actually I think you did tell me the story. Here's hoping I won't need to visit a doctor after getting hit in the head from some protester while I'm there.

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Post 13

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 7:11amSanction this postReply
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Steve:

Thank you. I apologize for endlessly using Bangladesh as an example, but it is illustrative. The endless politics of 'top half/bottom half' falls on its ear when it is pointed out to the bottom half in America that they are well into the top 10% in the world at large. Much of the top half in places like Bangladesh would kill to be in the bottom half of America.

Literally.

The politics of top half/bottom half in America is just so transparently abused by power seekers.

One half of the power seekers panders to the bottom half by telling them they are in the bottom half because the top half stole their cheese, and the power seekers are going to redistribute the cheese by force. Birth, connections, luck, crime. Behavior and actions and personal actions and responsibility have nothing to do with outcomes, outcomes are the result of force and chance, and the bottom half panderers seek power by pretending to ever change that endless treadmill of envy offered to the bottom of the hill. In an irony, instead of being encouraged to emulate actions and behavior that result in the generation of wealth(and let's not pretend that success is measured in any other way, because the basis for 'top half/bottom half' is not based on the result of the standing long jump, or specific skill with a paint brush, or number of friends on Facebook who give you 'likes' today...), the bottom half is preached a politics of disdain for those actions and behavior. Why? For lots of reasons. Because it is an easy sell at the bottom of the hill to sell 'Don't try to run up the hill.' Remember, in their religion, there is no hill to climb, only the shortcuts and chance and crime and accidents of those above. Because preaching it as well maintains an endless supply of buyers at the bottom of the hill, a forever dependent class ready to buy this excuse. They sell their vote cheap; the price is, the validation of the parking of their lives at the bottom of the hill. The power grubbers never even have to deliver on their implied promise of forced redistribution, only lip service, and Thank God, or else I would not have seen Ted Kennedy so often on those flights to the Caymans back in the day.

In that Zero Sum World, people don't bake pies: they unequally share 'the' pie, and it is the function of the guns of government to coerce 'more equitable' shares of 'the' pie when the pie has already long been baked and all the mess of pie baking has been cleaned up.

And, to a great extent, what is the mess of pie baking? What is the accessible to everyone path to climbing the local hill? It is by-and-large education.

They even corrupt the concept of education, by totally poisoning the debate. Their endless drumbeat message has been 'What is wrong with our Education System?' As if. Education is a process that is primarily taken, not given. It is at best 'well offered.' In America, education has long been 'well offered.' When the process of education fails, our very first response should not be to look at the teachers, other than insuring that education is well offered. Our first response should be to place the responsibility on the takers. When generations of those potential takers are told that they are entering a 'system that is failing' they are given the wrong impression that it is their function to walk effortlessly into their provided for free public education building, slouch in their chairs, and wait for someone to fix the Golden Education Funnel that is supposed to be effortlessly administering their education to them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, it is their job, as once told to me by my father, to reach up out of their seats and go after their own education by the throat, as if their lives depended on it, because they do. Encouraging kids to slouch passively in their seats and wait for 'the system to get fixed' -- because that is what meets the needs of the power grubbers selling 'fix the system' solutions -- is resulting in just yet more people at the bottom of the hill. Which is why the power grubbers sell the 'fix the system' nonsense.



The panderers to the top half are not much better, possibly worse, because they act like corruption magnets. They also sell the 'fix the system' nonsense. Few offer the far harder sell "clean up your act, send your kids to school with breakfast and a less than shitty attitude, make them responsible for taking their education."

The power grubbers on the right who sell the idea that they will use government to sell favor to businesses seeking shortcuts up the hill, no matter how they dress it up in a flag, are pushing fascism, cozy crony connections between the guns of government and commerce. It's one thing -- non-leveragable to power grubbing seekers thing -- to be anonymously 'business friendly,' and quite another to craft specific legislation favorable to specific winners at the top of the influence buying list, and unfavorable to the specific losers at the bottom of the influence buying list. As in Moynihan and IBM and a million other examples just like it. Not to pick on either, but we'd be here all day.

That process of selling government, creating IKE's MIC, the CronyFest on the Potomac, was not the exclusive act of only the bottom half pandering power grubbers. Our current soft fascism didn't get here by way of just one party.


We should be honorably electing state plumbers, to honorably keep the plumbing of state clean and free flowing. Not 'running the nation' and its economies, plural. That is courting fascism. I've no hope at all for our current out of all control political process until we stop electing American Emperors and start electing honorable plumbers. This started out as an exercise in hiring someone to fairly paint the double yellow lines down the middle of the road, and like every Jr. High committee On Average, We're Average effort, has devolved into a graceless, clawing mess.

One more windy rant.

regards,
Fred




(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 5/08, 7:42am)


Post 14

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 1:28pmSanction this postReply
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Fred,

What wonderful wisdom and writing skill you have! You may just call it a rant, but to me, it's an excellent essay (one of the truer and better-said things "in print" in the world).

Thanks a million.

Ed


Post 15

Sunday, May 9, 2010 - 2:28pmSanction this postReply
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Thank you for saying that, Ed. For me, it really is just enjoyable self-therapy. I write code to pay the bills. sometimes even dream in code, and when I wake from dreams like that, it is usually time to write something, for my own sanity.

I have noticed something though about reactions to my amateur windy rants: people who generally agree with them think I write OK, people who disagree with them think I write terribly.

D'OH! Go figure. They are often both right, though for different reasons. I've been told I use too many words. I'll take that, because it is a step up from the old days of being accused of using too many consonants(as in, any.)

regards,
Fred



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