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In reply to the discussion: So France bounces Sarkozy and Greece bounces them all. A morality play for US austerity proponents. [View all]hack89
(39,171 posts)27. The Greeks don't need to raise taxes
they just need to collect the money due to them.
According to a remarkable presentation that a member of Greeces central bank gave last fall, the gap between what Greek taxpayers owed last year and what they paid was about a third of total tax revenue, roughly the size of the countrys budget deficit. The shadow economybusiness thats legal but off the booksis larger in Greece than in almost any other European country, accounting for an estimated 27.5 per cent of its G.D.P. (In the United States, by contrast, that number is closer to nine per cent.) And the culture of evasion has negative consequences beyond the current crisis. It means that the revenue burden falls too heavily on honest taxpayers. It makes the system unduly regressive, since the rich cheat more. And its wasteful: it forces the government to spend extra money on collection (relative to G.D.P., Greece spends four times as much collecting income taxes as the U.S. does), even as evaders are devoting plenty of time and energy to hiding their income.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/07/11/110711ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz1uPEt42My
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So France bounces Sarkozy and Greece bounces them all. A morality play for US austerity proponents. [View all]
Stinky The Clown
May 2012
OP
Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador...
DutchLiberal
May 2012
#10
Absolutely. There are plenty of examples of the failures of austerity. If they (the corporations)
jwirr
May 2012
#30
Unfortunately, this presumption is not accurate in our present framework.
girl gone mad
May 2012
#12
Winning the election while making promises of a great life is easy. Producing those results is hard.
dkf
May 2012
#5
When there is a referendum on whether the economy is in place to serve the citizens (or vice versa),
Snarkoleptic
May 2012
#7
Greeks gave 8% of the vote to neo-nazi party; for first time in 4 decades they'll be in parliament..
DutchLiberal
May 2012
#9
The Greeks will be going back on the drachma with a 50% cut in the standard of living.
FarCenter
May 2012
#22
After a period of chaos, they will get a dictatorship of either the right or the left
FarCenter
May 2012
#24