It's a thing, but it's usually limited. In Germany, it's limited to actual officials, not all employees of the state - which is why more and more public servants are only employees these days. Employees can be laid off, officials can't.
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Greece votes OXI/No on more Austerity measures
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travisbickle
Member
Your take being someone who has never read any Karl Marx.
Socialism under Karl Marx is essentially the end of capitalism, a period when the worker takes back the means of production and shares the gains equally, socialism is maintained as a mode of production where things are produced based on their use-value rather than their surplus-value.
Theonik
Member
This is not entirely true. Teachers for instance still enjoy permanent positions in Germany. In some cases services have been spun from government services into government held companies.
Employees there are consider normal workers.
Some teachers are officials, some teachers are not. The ones that are not can be laid off.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
They're just waiting to pounce on Vienna.
Theonik
Member
Coriolanus
Banned
Referendum votes and economic strata: breakdown.
Rich voted mostly for nai, poor voted mostly for oxi.
Now try to remember who are the key tax evaders.
Rich voted mostly for nai, poor voted mostly for oxi.
Now try to remember who are the key tax evaders.
While certainely true, i'd say this is more a case of the rich simply having a lot more to loose in the case of a grexit even if they were diligent taxpayers.
My words exactly!
Member
M°°nblade;171377021 said:
Does that seem like artificially created paranoia?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=171298463&postcount=1880
More than that, two elephants in the room:
- Huge oil reserves in the Aegean Sea could be another cause for tension for in the following years
- Greece's geography is totally different than Belgium. Larger geographically, has hundreds of islands besides its' mainland, is located at the southeast border of Europe (almost all illegal immigration goes through here), and is not neighbouring with Holland, Germany and France, but the Balcans and Turkey.
Poodlestrike
Banned
North Korea thinks?
Prime crotch
Banned
http://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/...ive-months-humiliation-and-blackm?onglet=full
but I thought we were all friends!
petran79
Banned
But you can not do this with masticha gum from the island of Chios. Those trees grow only there!
Theonik
Member
They also grow in the shores of Turkey on the opposite side. They are largely unexploited though, but there were plans to develop their production.
Greece does still have Saffron.
A
A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
I think you may have misread my posts at some point. Bear in mind my initial post was a response to the simplistic notion (presented by another poster, not yourself) that these Eurozone debt crises have arisen solely from nations "living beyond their means". You saying that Eurozone nations with higher debt levels didn't experience crises only supports that, in the same way that my examples of Ireland and Spain do from the other side. To clarify: it has never been my contention that these crises are unique to the EMU or that the EMU is the sole cause of them.
My point is that the design of the EMU - e.g. the lack of a tailored interest rate, the increased competition for Euro bond issuers compared to the monopolistic position of a government with its own currency and the politicking/bureau-crating we've seen since the crisis regarding the role of the ECB - makes its members more susceptible to sovereign debt crises than they would be if they had a monetary system typical of modern developed nations outside the Eurozone: a floating value non-convertible fiat currency monopolised by the consolidated government sector (government + central bank) of a single nation. If you can name a nation with such a monetary system that experienced a sovereign debt crisis or default in the wake of the GFC I'd be interested to study it.
Here in Germany, we have "Beamte", formerly the backbone of the governmental workforce (aka public servants). They take a pay cut compared to similar positions in the private sector in exchange for a host of benefits including better than average pensions, performance-decoupled/timed advancements and being virtually immune to pink slips. They also can't rat out the government for doing illegal shit unless it's their declared role and there is a specific law in place enabling them to do so, cannot go on strike and some other impactful limitations - so it's not without drawbacks. However, unless you criminally fuck up you are guaranteed to stay employed at your current wage level and get your guaranteed wage increases and rank advancements as per your wage tier, firmly determined by your education level upon entering the workforce. They can still be pseudo-fired by repeatedly reassigning them across Germany until they despair and resign, but that's not a guaranteed success.
They've become an endangered species ever since someone looked at the pension fund predictions and shat their pants in terror. There are now official and inofficial policies in place to weed out as many of those high pension positions and replace as many of them as possible with a regular hired workforce.
But yeah, Germany still has a sizeable governmental workforce that is basically immune to getting fired.
That wasn't much of an advantage in 1914 and 1940 though, but I get your point
Even for a country like Belgium, there's a lot of protest against defensive cuts. The argument is usually the agreed efforts and participation in NAVO operations.
Most of western Europe countries are unaware of the situations in South Europe. And even when they're aware, they usually don't give a fuck or are too slow to act. Also see Yugoslav Wars ...
At this moment there's still no agreement on de immigration problem and news about albanian citizen problems in Macedonia is sparse.
Coriolanus
Banned
M°°nblade;171385835 said:That wasn't much of an advantage in 1914 and 1940 though, but I get your point
Even for a country like Belgium, there's a lot of protest against defensive cuts. The argument is usually the agreed efforts and participation in NAVO operations.
Most of western Europe countries are unaware of the situations in South Europe. And even when they're aware, they usually don't give a fuck or are too slow to act. Also see Yugoslav Wars ...
Not "or", mate. "And".
Taking into account that this is a rather one-sided recounting of events, it's still a pretty eye-opening narrative!
Theonik
Member
It's funny you mention the Yugoslavia wars considering they happened right next to Greece.M°°nblade;171385835 said:That wasn't much of an advantage in 1914 and 1940 though, but I get your point
Even for a country like Belgium, there's a lot of protest against defensive cuts. The argument is usually the agreed efforts and participation in NAVO operations.
Most of western Europe countries are unaware of the situations in South Europe. And even when they're aware, they usually don't give a fuck or are too slow to act. Also see Yugoslav Wars ...
At this moment there's still no agreement on de immigration problem and news about albanian citizen problems in Macedonia is sparse.
Greece is also one of three European nations complying with NATO budget recommendation, their allies have pushed every time budget reductions were considered.
Concerning immigration there is an estimated 2-3m illegal immigrants in Greece in a population of 11m. It is ridiculously expensive.
It shouldn't be surprising. The EU leadership are vermin. That has been the problem from the very start.
Coriolanus
Banned
I can't even comprehend someone thinking that they'd have to warn Schauble not to be too generous with Greece.
All this talk about debt servicing from benji, but some feel the debt is serviceable if they're actually growing. So it's the conditionality of the loans that has caused more harm, ie austerity. Problem is, your economy can't always grow faster than your debt service, so you're going to get hiccups.
http://www.voxeu.org/article/greece-solvent-illiquid-policy-implications
http://www.voxeu.org/article/greece-solvent-illiquid-policy-implications
Theonik
Member
Welcome to the REAL IMF. That's what we've been alluding to when people were interpreting the technical reports from the IMF as a sign of reason because what they think, what they do, and their end goals all go on entirely different directions.
They are also on BLAST to burn Greece to the ground by Brazil and their other international members. Making this clearly Eurozone problem into a wider EU problem and then into an international problem was a political error of biblical consequences.
Edit:
Varoufakis was the hero Greece deserved, but not the one we needed right now.
So IMF = Pandora's box?
It doesnt come as too much a surprise to me. Greece keeps saying over and over that austerity measures will make things unacceptably harsh for their citizenry but it keeps getting proposed. Its a war waged with banks and accounts in lieu of soldiers and bombs.
If I were Greece I wouldnt think about cutting the military budget. You're weak enough financially as is.
Coriolanus
Banned
Theonik
Member
Neither would surprise me. But you'd be right in that like Syriza is trying to pass part of the blame to the creditors, Schäuble is trying to pass part of his blame to a faceless institution like the IMF. In other words, it is quite convenient in this way.
Edit:
Brazil and other international members of the IMF were complaining about Greece getting a relatively lenient treatment under the IMF bailouts.
These were backed by accusations of first world/European favouritism.
QuicheFontaine
Member
What exactly is the point of making all these Tweets anyway?
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-33459366
So "we know what can and should be done, but we will hide behind the rules we imposed onto this".
So "we know what can and should be done, but we will hide behind the rules we imposed onto this".
Theonik
Member
Reading that account potentially so people post them in these threads and people get mad. Twitter news are a plague.
Edit: Oh. He did in fact joke about swapping Greece for Puerto Rico.
Edit:
The rules that might I add, they have been making up as they go along through these 5 years.
maniac-kun
Member
I hate Schäuble. He was always aweful.
They knew that from the very beginning. They also knew that they wouldn't get most of their bailout money back. The only reasons they are hesitant to admit that and act accordingly are (a) the worry that other Eurozone states would demand the same treatment and (b) the fear of being grilled by voters at home.
This is why economists hate politicians.
QuicheFontaine
Member
It really is. All I'm thinking is, couldn't you just not post all that shit?
Edit:
You should always wash your hair before a haircut.
I understand this. But if
Why insist on a new deal with Greece? Let's assume Greece would accept the conditions imposed, why lend them money under these conditions? Wouldn't that mean that they would just throw away more money? Why were a lot of people upset yesterday in the meeting and shouting at Tsipras? Tsipras is saving them money at this point.
My words exactly!
Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afl9WFGJE0M
Pathetic.
Tsipras, Grexit already!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObpSd9DVD9E
Coriolanus
Banned
Things b so cray that i'm just expecting snap elections and Varoufakis running for PM of Greece.
I think that they want to implement a de-facto debt relief through extensions of payback timeframes and reductions of interests over many years, so that nobody notices or cares anymore. Even the baltic states won't care about Greece's debt in ten or twenty years as much as they care right now. The voters won't, and they are the most important group of people here. The Eurozone likely wants to push the problem under the carpet and deal without once the public spotlight has gone away. I guess that part of the frustration with the Greek government comes from the fact that they are either not understanding or not accepting this unspoken but obvious agreement.
Another point is that politicians care about their legacy, and most of them, to varying degrees, do not want to be held responsible for reverting European integration. People like Martin Schulz have actually been very frank about that. He almost literally said that he would prefer any deal over a Grexit, just so that he is not responsible for kicking a state out of the Euro and desecrating the great European project. That explains why so many politicians were optimistic and happy when Greece submitted their first proposal weeks ago, even without reading it. They just assumed that in the end we would have some deal for political reasons. The actual facts of the deal don't matter to many of them.
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