[Poordogabone]

...the government will take 50% of whatever I leave for my kids and grandkids, the so-called "death tax".

Sometimes I feel like starting a riot myself.

KJ, the U.S tax system is a feeble attempt to redistribute some of the wealth to level the Playing field, better yet than this halfhearted redistribution process would be to prevent the obscene disparity of wealth in the first place. That would spare us from the outrage of some that cannot bear giving up some of their hard earned money.
The "death tax" only affects those that own an estate worth over $5.42 million up from $650,000 in 2001. If you have a spouse you can double that figure. Only the wealth exceeding that sum is taxable at a rate of about 40% officially but after deductions and loopholes the average figure falls to about 16%. If you did not know that look it up, you might be able to leave a few more millions to your kids.
Although it is true that the more affluent folks pay more taxes in dollars, the less fortunate pay a higher percentage of their income.
So yeah why don't you and the 1 or 2% of the population that will be burdened by the estate tax start a riot. I'm sure that you will get a lot of sympathy.

[alokin]

You pay taxes if you get something back. If your health system is a ruin the transport miserable and the streets are full of holes why would you pay taxes? Anyway when the bureaucracy is as slow and complicated than in Greece paying taxes might be more work than not paying taxes.

[KaiserJeep]

KJ, the U.S tax system is a feeble attempt to redistribute some of the wealth to level the Playing field, better yet than this halfhearted redistribution process would be to prevent the obscene disparity of wealth in the first place. That would spare us from the outrage of some that cannot bear giving up some of their hard earned money.
-snip-

You are correct about the death tax, my wife the CPA tells me. So I don't have to worry about that one.

In my earlier message I mentioned that I get to spend less of my income than the various governments. Now let me add that I earned every cent I made working since 1972. I also paid back my student loan, then bought college degrees for both my kid and my wife. By chance my salary places me in an upper income bracket - but only because I work and live in an area that is extremely costly, a place that is so expensive that I could not afford to move here today, at the end of a long working career.

I have basically worked at the same place, in a variety of jobs, for 37 years. Before that I did a variety of things, back to when I mowed lawns at age 14. Nobody needs to level the playing field because of me, I earned everything I have and what I have is a house, finally paid off, and a retirement account that is too small.

I'm tired of people who want things given to them. You or anyone else is not entitled to a share of my income.

[shallow sand]

KJ. The problems you refer to are only getting worse. Those that are going to make higher incomes are usually college graduates. As college costs are so high, this group will delay starting a family (age 30+) will have one child, or maybe two, and many will not have children.

By the time the above group has had child one, many in the group that is not going to make a higher income has probably had three or more children, many being teenagers who will soon be having their own children. Unfortunately most in the lower income group will not complete college. No college generally means low income.

I know there are exceptions. However, when something like 60% of kids in our rural school qualify for the free lunch program, it is not a good sign.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm not buying it. My Father worked in the military - they don't pay a lot - and had six kids. That put us at poverty level - but my parents were too proud to take any handouts, including school lunches. But I was oldest and he couldn't afford to buy my education, so I had to pay for it myself. So I borrowed money for two years, then did my own military service, then completed that engineering degree using the GI Bill.

I had one kid when I was 30, and my daughter waited until age 33 to get pregnant. We are both college grads, but I made sure my kid worked, while both her Mother and I worked, to buy her education. Because you have to understand that it takes work to get money.

Which is why I have no patience with people who think that education should be given away. Things are worth what you pay for them, and there are already too many drones in college who regard it as an alternative to work.

I work in Silicon Valley - it sickens me to see how many H1B work visas are used here to take jobs that Americans would have if they had the education. My point being, if you make the sacrifices, you get the degree and the job.

[Poordogabone]

I'm tired of people who want things given to them. You or anyone else is not entitled to a share of my income.

My point is that better to redistribute wealth is to avoid obscene disparity in the first place. It turns out that the so called nanny states, or countries which through higher taxes provide free quality education, free healthcare and a decent minimum wage are the countries that are doing best economically and in standard of living with lower percentage of unemployed and welfare recipients.

[vox_mundi]

Greek banks lose quarter of value as liquidity crisis feared
The share prices of Greece's biggest banks have plunged as depositors pull billions out of accounts and support from ECB is questioned

Greece’s banks have lost a quarter of their value in two days as the dual threats of a bank run and the loss of support from the European Central Bank threaten a liquidity squeeze.

The Athens Bank Index, a weighted index of Greek bank shares, fell to an all-time low on Tuesday with the country’s five biggest banks having lost €15bn - half their value - in four months.

Up to €8bn worth of deposits has been pulled out of Greek banks since November, according to Moody’s, with more withdrawals likely amid fears that the life support from the European Central Bank will be extinguished.

Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras, who was sworn in as prime minister on Monday, on Tuesday appointed the economist Yanis Varoufakis, a fellow fierce opponent of European-imposed austerity, as Greece’s finance minister.

The move was seen as a further sign that Greece is on a collision course with the EU over repaying debt and maintaining its bail-out programme, which currently expires on February 28. Mr Varoufakis, who studied at the University of Essex, has described Greece’s austerity agreements as “fiscal waterboarding”.

[Shaved Monkey]

Should get interesting.

It's no secret what Varoufakis thinks Greece should do with its debt.

The economics professor at the University of Athens, who announced his appointment as the country's finance minister in a posting on his personal blog on Tuesday, has been arguing since the beginning of the crisis that Greece should default while staying a member of the euro area.


the shattered country can never begin to recover until its massive international rescue package is completely renegotiated

Greece should have never joined the euro area, but now that it's in, a departure would be like falling from a cliff, he said. "The last line in 'Hotel California' explains where we are: you can check out any time, but you can never leave," he told Bloomberg Radio in May 2012.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/the-rise ... 2zkfu.html

[radon1]

Interesting whether Syriza survives at the helm till the next elections.

In other words, which way they go - Iceland or Egypt.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm tired of people who want things given to them. You or anyone else is not entitled to a share of my income.

My point is that better to redistribute wealth is to avoid obscene disparity in the first place. It turns out that the so called nanny states, or countries which through higher taxes provide free quality education, free healthcare and a decent minimum wage are the countries that are doing best economically and in standard of living with lower percentage of unemployed and welfare recipients.

"Doing best economically" by whose standards? I compared Germany, the UK, the USA, France, and the various Scandinavian countries.

In terms of GDP per capita, there is a tiny country Luxembourg ($48,968), then the USA (2nd at $35,619), with Norway (4th at $32,057)), Denmark (6th at $28,539), Iceland (11th at $26,929), Sweden (16th at $24,626), Finland (17th at $24,416), the UK (18th at $24,252), Germany (19th at $23,917), and France (20th at $23,614).

In terms of the share of the World's wealth, there is the USA (1st with 25.4%), the UK (4th at 4.71%), Germany (5th at 4.65%), France (8th at 3.49%), Sweden (33rd with 0.43%), Norway (44th with 0.22%), Denmark (45th with 0.22%), Finland (54th with 0.17%), and Iceland (118th with 0.01%).

In terms of wealth per capita, there is the USA ($143,727), The UK ($128,959), France ($94,557), Germany ($90,768), Iceland ($81,945), Norway ($79,292), Sweden ($78,148), Denmark ($66,191), and Finland ($53,154).

In terms of the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality, with 1 being complete inequality and 0 being complete equality, therefore lower is better), then there is Finland (0.615), Norway (0.633), Iceland (0.664), Germany (0.667), the UK (0.697), France (0.730), Sweden (0.742), the USA (0.801), and Denmark (0.808).

Then there is the Human Development Index. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living, and quality of life for countries worldwide, and higher is better. The rankings are Norway (1st at 0.944), the USA (5th at 0.914), Germany (6th at 0.911), Denmark (10th at 0.900), Sweden (12th at 0.898), Iceland (13th at 0.895), the UK (14th at 0.892), France (20th at 0.844), and Iceland (24th at 0.879).

National unemployment figures rankings are Norway (3.4%), Germany (5.1%), Iceland (5.4%), the USA (5.6%), the UK (5.8%), Denmark (7.0%), Sweden (8.1%), and France (10.4%).

Minimum wage figures per hour are: France ($12.22), Germany ($10.90), the UK ($10.32), and the USA ($7.25). Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway have no such minimum wage legislation, but comprehensive welfare that includes housing, food, healthcare, and job training. France, Germany, the UK, and the USA also have welfare systems but these are difficult to compare meaningfully.

I don't see any particular superiority to those countries you alluded to. In fact, Socialism vs. Capitalism shows little difference between these countries, and all are nominal Democracies. Fortunate are the citizens of any of these countries compared to most people in the World.

The HDI figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

The economics figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth

The unemployment figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate

The minimum wage rankings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

[Poordogabone]

KJ, I would love to continue this conversation, and some of the stats that you presented is, well debatable or at least open to interpretation, also the global financial crisis threw a hell of a monkey wrench on the BAU but I won't test the moderators any longer as this is off topic. Let's just agree to disagree.
Now back to Greece.

Leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras threw down an open challenge to international creditors on Wednesday by halting privatisation plans agreed under the country's bailout deal, prompting a third day of heavy losses on financial markets.

After announcing a halt to the privatisation of the port of Piraeus on Tuesday, for which China's Cosco Group [COSCO.UL] and four others had been short-listed, the government indicated it would put the whole programme on hold.

It said it would stop the sale of stakes in the Public Power Corporation of Greece (DEHr.AT), Greece's biggest utility, and refiner Hellenic Petroleum (HEPr.AT), and put other planned asset sales of motorways, airports and the power grid on ice.

Tsipras, who met Russia's ambassador to Athens on Monday and the Chinese envoy the next day, told ministers that the government would not seek "a mutually destructive clash" with creditors. But he warned that Greece would not back down from demanding a renegotiation of debt.

France has ruled out a straight cancellation of Greece's debt, about 80 percent of which is held by other euro zone governments and multinational organisations such as the IMF. However, Paris has said it would be open to talks on making Greece's debt burden more sustainable and Tsipras is expected to meet President Francois Hollande before an EU summit on Feb. 12.

The response from Germany was frosty. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Athens should have discussed the halt to privatisations with its partners before making an announcement.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-greece-politics-idUSKBN0L10VP20150128

[radon1]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-2 ... tions-veto

The good news for Greece, of course, is that it now has all the optionality: it can use its veto power as a bargaining chip to unblock US foreign policy in Ukraine (because at the end of the day, Europe is merely losing as a result of the Russian sanctions) and demand a debt haircut in exchange for siding with John Kerry on further Russian "punishment." Or he may simply hold the line and hold off for a competing, better offer from Russia and the BRICs, whose leverage may be nominal now that crude is plummeting, but if and when the last shale junk bond investor blows up and the US shale renaissance is over sending crude soaring right back to $100, then watch as the oil exporters are back with a bang, and dictating geopolitical terms.

And whatever happens, please don't remind Brussels that point 40 of Syriza's 40 Point Manifesto, aka the "nuclear option", is "Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO."

[Quinny]

I'm starting to really like this Syriza party. At last a left wing party that doesn't cave in at first pressure from the bullies!

Remember everyone saying the Iceland government would collapse under pressure from the International banking system, but it seems to be holding up pretty well.

Hope they keep it up.

@ KJ I'm tired of the corporates and bankers stealing all our paid for public assets! Unless you're multi millionaire you're money will be trickling up - not down!

[americandream]

Its a start as it illustrates that the force for strong and fundamental change remains a popular one despite repeated betrayal by revisionists and opportunists.

[Poordogabone]

Interesting article on Germany's post war debt forgiveness (the London agreement) including debt owed to Greece.
The incentive was "to build a stable and prosperous Western Europe that could contain the threat from Soviet Russia."

Six decades ago, an agreement to cancel half of postwar Germany's debt helped foster a prolonged period of prosperity in the war-torn continent. The new government in Athens says Greece – and Europe – now need a similar deal.

“Germany's resurgence has only been possible through waiving extensive debt payments and stopping reparations to its World War II victims,” economic historian Albrecht Ritschl told Der Spiegel in 2011, describing Germany as “the biggest debt transgressor” of the past century. “During the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history,” Ritschl said, pointing to the collapse of the German economy in the early 1930s, which sent shockwaves through global markets. “It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe's headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.”

Back in 1953, the money Greece gave up included a loan extorted during the gruesome Nazi occupation of the country, when thousands of resistance fighters and civilians were murdered and hundreds of thousands starved to death.

Alexis Tsipras’s decision on Tuesday to lay a wreath at a memorial to Greek communists murdered by the Nazis, in his very first outing as prime minister, was widely interpreted as a reminder of Germany’s historical debt towards Greece.

http://www.france24.com/en/20150129-london-agreement-1953-debt-write-germany-economic-miracle-greece-austerity/

[EdwinSm]

An interesting picture of who stands to loose if Greek debt is written off



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31067473

[lpetrich]

I'm not buying it. My Father worked in the military - they don't pay a lot - and had six kids. That put us at poverty level - but my parents were too proud to take any handouts, including school lunches.

Self-destruction is not my thing.

Which is why I have no patience with people who think that education should be given away. Things are worth what you pay for them, and there are already too many drones in college who regard it as an alternative to work.

Should this site's admins charge a steep access fee?

[americandream]

Bourgeoisie socialism cannot withstand the forces of capital as Syrizias (new) position on the Euro debt situation
illustrates:

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02 ... e-f21.html

[Quinny]

Doesn't look good, it looks like capitulation, but I can still see it being a holding pattern as such. We need to see what Syriza come up with this week. There is a lot of tough talking on both sides which is primarily aimed at appeasing the relative constituencies not at the 'opposite' side of the table.

[Withnail]

An interesting picture of who stands to loose if Greek debt is written off



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31067473

$323 billion?

I can see why there's talk of default. Seems almost impossible for them to pay that off from a small, contracting economy.