4 ms·

Maybe you tell other Greeks to pay taxes again.

• _delirium 14y ago
  Greeks actually pay more taxes, as a percentage of GDP, than Americans do (31% versus 27%). The main differences lie elsewhere, #1 being that the GDP that is taken out of is much lower, due to Greece having mostly a cottage-industry type economy (lots of small family businesses, few megacorps). That in turn has a lot of causes, some cultural, some historical, some due to excessively complex regulations (which have been streamlined in the past 10 years, but not fast enough).
  • maigret 14y ago
    The US is far from the path to debt free either - the difference with Greece is that they can print their own money. The US is trading low taxes against high inflation right now.
    • Symmetry 14y ago
      Except our inflation isn't particularly high at the moment in the US, we were undershooting our 2% target for a while then the Fed printed a bunch of money (because they can't bring the Fed Rate below the IOR Rate) and now we're on target again. EDIT: The fact that we could print money to get out of debt if we needed to is a big part of why we don't need to, though.