Greek austerity plan includes tax cut for the rich

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Tax cut for the rich in austerity Greece

Cameron in the UK did the same thing with his partner in crime Clegg earlier this year... In this case, I doubt that the Troika will complain, they in fact demanded that measures to stop tax evasion be abandoned! This is surely adding insult to injury, what more proof is required that this is a class war and a land grab...

Very, very stupid. The extreme parties will rise yet further.

Yes. They seem to be begging for civil unrest and revolt.

Absolutely crazy.

No surprise, this is the over classes non-solution to every problem.

I think it is way too little, way too late.

Look closely people, the mess in Greece is the end result of socialist/leftist policies; a complete and total failure.

No, this is an illustration of Austrian economics, which is a complete and utter failure.

Before that, we had an illustration of the dangers of unregulated capitalism.

What we need here is a good healthy dose of sensible socialism.

when has "trickle-down" actually rained down something besides rain and woes upon the working class? certainly not during the 80s when all the good factory jobs fled america and left many an american community cratered so that "lifestyles of the rich and famous" could continue unabated. when mitt the plastic mormon says "trust me, this time it will work" [IOW tax only the lower classes to pay for upper-class tax cuts], he is just peeing on my leg and then telling me it's only raining.

Could you specify the precise ones?

They were spending other people's money, well they ran out of other people's money to spend, it's what you get in a welfare state where people expect government to take care of them.

Some countries with incredibly large amounts of national resources along with a very low population can get away with having massive entitlements, but Greece's economy was largely tourism based and while the situation wouldn't be quite as bad if there wasn't a global recession, they would still be in this mess regardless.

They dug themselves into a fiscal hole, and when you realize you are in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging yourself deeper.

The bigger problem is their government didn't do it's gob in enforcing the necessary taxation to pay for their expenditures. Also, it wasn't the "welfare state" that was the problem. It was government jobs and pensions that were way to generous to certain people. It was not the poor that broke the system. However now that they are being hit with a huge recession and have little revenue they are basically being told by the EU to kick poor unemployed people out on the street and let them starve.

Even if they had taxed their rich people at 100%, they couldn't have paid for those austerity measures and that would be short lived cause the rich would have been taxed into poverty and the situation would have been made worse.

Also doesn't help matters that from what I've read about the tax code in Greece thus far, it is an insane mess. It looks like they should simplify the tax code for starters.

The problem Greece has stems from the fact their country couldn't afford the entitlement programs they promised their people. Greece lacks the natural resources that we see in Norway for instance and also has double the population of Norway.

It isn't the fault of the wealthy (unless we're talking about the politicians), they weren't the ones that promised what the country couldn't afford.

Nor is it the fault of the poor. While paying more taxes wouldn't particularly hurt the rich, cutting social programs definitely would hurt the poor.
And while taxing the rich might not entirely solve Greece's - or our - problems, it certainly would help. Not taxing the rich when everyone else has to sacrifice would only inflame class conflict. And no, that has nothing to do with the sorry old Republican mantra of class envy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Considering many wealthy people are small business owners, yeah it does hurt the rich, not only that it locks the poor into those social programs which are unaffordable.



Actually taxing the rich more doesn't do anything other than feed the "sticking it to the man mentality" which encourageous the idiot politicians to raise taxes even more...

Hiking the Taxes on the wealthy isn't going to help matters in Greece, nor in the US. It will actually cause more problems.

The people that are extremely wealthy can just sit on their money and not make any investments, then the taxes collected drop to zero, cause they aren't taking income.

So the people you are hitting with these insane tax hikes will be small business owners whom will be driven out of business due to insane taxes.

I don't see how hiking taxes on small business owners to the point they can't stay in business, especially when all the government does when it gets more revenue is spend it on another bridge to nowhere, helps the fiscal situation of either country.

The argument of hiking taxes would have merit if we actually saw fiscal discipline from the Government. However, in light of the fact the Government seems more inclined to play politics then even try to create a budget (this is directed solely at Democrats, because the Republicans have passed a budget in 2011 that was never even looked at in the Democrat controlled Senate, this was repeated in 2012). We haven't had a budget since President Bush left office, well not one that passed both houses of congress (in fact we didn't see any attempts at a budget until Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2011).

So as far as I'm concerned, how about we see a budget before we even talk about hiking taxes.

Legitimate businessmen won't stop making investments and doing business even if they are asked to pay a little more - despite their threat to do just that. During the Clinton years, business people did just fine, regardless of the tax hike.
And asking the rich to pay more isn't just a "sticking it to the man mentality." If poor and middle class people have to sacrifice, I fail to see why everyone else shouldn't - meaning the rich.
And by the way, those social programs include medical, unemployment, and retirement benefits. How are any of those things possibly bad?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Comparing struggling EU members to the US is silly. Their economic problems are relative, not absolute. The real problem is southern Europe has neither the natural resources nor the industrial productivity to compete with its northern neighbors, yet they were forced into a financial union. It would be like the states of Mississippi and Alabama were cut off from federal funding and told they had to raise all their own federal revenue in proportion to their population. It just wouldn't happen. If you look at where the money flows poorer states are constantly getting federal bailouts from wealthier states.

I would say that refusing to tax the rich and dabbling in socialism are both stupid ideas.

I'm not sure what greece needs to do as I have no idea what's been going on in that country since the Byzantine empire fell, but if they have no resources and no industry then that sounds pretty bleak. I believe a tourism-based economy of culture is possible, but I don't know enough about the current state of Greece to say if it would be possible for them or how they would do it.