Today Greece is in a bit of turmoil, as Unions have called for a general strike. At the same time, the communist party have organized protests, and wherever there is some protests going on, like flies on shit, the anarchist thugs show up to spread some violence. Like in Athens where they firebombed a bank earlier today, killing three and injuring many other, amongst them several police-officers. The background to the turmoil, is the severe financial savings-plan Greece needed to implement in order to gain foreign financial aid to dig themselves out of the deficit and debt hole they've buried themselves into. The Unions and commies don't like this naturally. They think all was nice and sweet as it was, and that the world owe them a living. Must be nice beeing so delusional. State-finances are not all that different from family-finances. In the long run, you can't spend more than you earn. Very easy concept. The commies think money grow on trees, that a nation can afford a huge public-sector and not worry too much about who pays for all the beurocrats and benefit programs. In reality the money to finance this, is squeezed from the private sector and the paycheque of all working in the private sector. Forced from those that produce, into the pockets of those that think they are entitled to get something for nothing. Add to this the rampant corruption in Greek politics and public sector, how they have suppressed the real numbers with regards to deficit spending and national debt. Under leftist _and_ rightist governments in the last 35 or so years since the monarchy was abolished. Greece have quite simply borrowed themselves into near bancrupcy. The cure back to financial stability will be a harsh one, but it is very much needed. That the unions and the commies don't understand this, says a lot of how naive their understanding of finances is. And the violent anarchists using this situation for their own violent thuggery, is reason enough for the state to up the ante with regards to what police and state militia may or not do during protests.
Surely you can understand the workers anger at the cuts that have taken place. Saw a teacher interviewed on CNN yesterday. Her take home pay had been slashed from 1300e a month to 900e.. The Greek government are to blame for this. The country is screwed and will prob have to leave the euro. If i was a Greek i would be on the streets too.
Well yes, but it is not as if Greece had any choice in the matter. It was either harsh savings in public spending right here, right now and for years to come, or total collapse of the Greek economy. A total collapse would be much, much more severe, and would thrust the entire country into proper chaos. Those who protest may be upset about the cuts in public spending, but they have to realize that there is no other realistic option. I guess this is just a kneejerk reaction from most of the protestors. Reality will sink in as they get time to adapt to the financial realities, rather than think they could have proceeded with living in a financial bubble. As for the politicians, one get what one deserve. Greece is a democracy, and they have voted into office people and parties who have essentially lied to them. People and parties that have not adjusted the means to the ends, but rather fudged the numbers and racked up debt in order to pay for an ever increasing public sector. It had to end some time. Reality always catches up with delusions. Better now than later.
Democracy brought them to socialism, and socialism brought them failure. It's the workers' fault for not reading Mises, Hayek or Rothbard. They were bribed with their own money, haha.
It could bring them to communism yet... In Ireland there have been savage cuts in public sector pay as well but Irish people dont seem to have an appetite for rioting. They just get drunk and bitch about it.
Their country is facing insolvency, and the public workers can't even take a pay cut. The problem is the Unions in that country, and the HUGE percentage of public sector workers. It's killing their country.
They should've left the Euro as soon as all this shit kicked off. In fact no, they should just never have been let in in the first place. The government forges it's accounts and the standard in Greece is to get paid for 13 months work a year. Their taxi drivers were striking because they were actually gonna have to pay taxes on the money they earn. S'all fucked up, but they got themselves into that mess. Glad we're not shouldering any of the bail out since we're not in the Eurozone. Fuck 'em. They got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out as far as I'm concerned.
If they had been praising the Gods and making proper sacrifices, then they never would have gotten into this mess. I blame Kratos.
Stupid people in greece. They should know better than to think you can spend your way out of a recession. Wait... what? That doesn't work? Ut oh.
Same with the rest of the Europe. They are so delusional and want more regulation! Europe will never understand the ways of Capitalism.
Neither does America though. Who did huge bail outs again? Government intervention into markets isn't a component of true Capitalism. S'all fucked at the end of the day. Every current political/economic system seems to be collapsing all around us. From American crony capitalism to European socialism, nothing seems guaranteed anymore. It's all just cycles... empires always collapse. The next few years/decades are gonna be interesting.
For a successful economic future for all involved, self sustenance is the answer. Stop throwing maltav cocktails at the ones who you allow to sustain you.
It sounds like you're advocating economic freedom, but that can't be possible. All we have to do to save the world is end the Fed. Imagine a world where the government would have to publicly tax us to pay for things instead of printing money in secret. Maybe socialists would begin to understand that nothing is free? If the US underwent a monetary overhaul the world would have to follow.
People laying dead in the street? Must be liberalism in action It's unclear if the police officer the liberal rioters set on fire survived. These bank workers did not: Confused about the shoes stiicking out? Don't be. That's a corpse. The rioting liberals set the bank on fire and then wouldn't let fire-fighters save the 3 people inside. Wondering what their last moments on earth were like? Pictures of that too: They died shortly thereafter. Yay liberalism! Lay people murdered for no reason! Go socialism! Che! Che! Che! We should totally build camps that do this on an industrial scale to all the people we don't like!
What can't be possible? Economic freedom itself, or me advocating it? I think it's very much in the realm of possibilities for people. Maybe not everyone, cause you can't be lazy and acheive economic independence. Economic independence, to me, is the American Dream. It's THE goal. Umm. End the federal reserve. If that happened wouldn't the government try to raise taxes and cut payrolls like they're doing in Greece now? I mean, we have a lot of expensive, fancy government programs that cost some coin. For that to be successful we would have to change some of our philosophies, namely the ones regarding our military and foreign policy. edit: Would it be safe to say that what formulates those philosophies is the motives for maintaining the oil/dollar standard? If this is true, then we need to move away from oil and to a safe renewable energy resource that can be boxed, wrapped, and sold. Ohh, and completely controlled as to create enough demand to support the dollar as consumers would be forced, to an extent, to purchase it.
Precisely. It's harder to steal from people when the lights are on. It has less to do with oil and more to do with the dollar. If we pulled in our military empire the US and its dollar would, in all likelihood, collapse. The only thing keeping our credit rating from going junk is our military. Personally, I can't wait for the day when the SHTF and my ninja skills can be put to good use.
Meaning with the people aware of their governments actions, the government is less able to take advantage of them? Forgive me. I can be really dense with this stuff. It seems to me that the dollar and oil are in a sense one in the same. I mean, what is the dollar? What is it worth if not backed by some physical thing that has a very high value/demand? If not backed by something tangible then what are we talking about? American ingenuity? Something we can produce and export? How stable, or how competitive can American ingenuity remain? This is a big question if the dollar is not backed by something of high value that you can put in your hands and admire, or has great use like historically, gold, and since the Nixon administration, oil (not directly, but that is what it seems it has become). lol.