3 ms·

>But they have been following the Troika's plan for over 7 years now Except they aren't. They aren't fixing their tax fraud - no one is paying enough taxes. Th

>But they have been following the Troika's plan for over 7 years now Except they aren't. They aren't fixing their tax fraud - no one is paying enough taxes. They didn't fix their retirement age, there are easy loopholes around it, etc and a million other things. Greek fraud predated this plan and worked during this plan. The EU cant fix Greece's corrupt governments and leaders. That's why we're where we're at right now. Also Iceland is a edge case. It has one tenth the amount of people of the city I live in. Its like a small suburb going broke. Greece has 12 million people. More than likely you're looking at an Argentina-like situation.

sergiosgc 11y ago
> They aren't fixing their tax fraud - no one is paying enough taxes. This is something that takes a long time. It is unrealistic to expect Greeks can fix something like this in the time-frame needed to solve this crisis. Worse, during a crisis there is pressure to escape taxation making the job a lot more difficult. I'm from Portugal. Portugal had Greek levels of tax fraud in the 80s. It took twenty years, from the late 90s onward, to get to decent levels of fraud. I rate the work done here as excellent. And even then, it took two decades! If Europe were serious about helping Greece, they'd be assisting with setting up an efficient finance ministry, not jacking up VAT levels and pushing more of the economy outside legality.
cgio 11y ago
Ok we got it, you don't like Greeks even though you are one. No need to reiterate a thousand times. We judge the austerity program and theoretically, with your assertions on the volume of flaws in the Greek economy, it should be easy to demonstrate improvements in 6-7 years. The opposite happened, therefore something was wrong with the imported wisdom and despite the moral integrity of the troika (the troika is not Greeks, that should give you some confidence.)

sergiosgc 11y ago

> They aren't fixing their tax fraud - no one is paying enough taxes. This is something that takes a long time. It is unrealistic to expect Greeks can fix something like this in the time-frame needed to solve this crisis. Worse, during a crisis there is pressure to escape taxation making the job a lot more difficult. I'm from Portugal. Portugal had Greek levels of tax fraud in the 80s. It took twenty years, from the late 90s onward, to get to decent levels of fraud. I rate the work done here as excellent. And even then, it took two decades! If Europe were serious about helping Greece, they'd be assisting with setting up an efficient finance ministry, not jacking up VAT levels and pushing more of the economy outside legality.

cgio 11y ago

Ok we got it, you don't like Greeks even though you are one. No need to reiterate a thousand times. We judge the austerity program and theoretically, with your assertions on the volume of flaws in the Greek economy, it should be easy to demonstrate improvements in 6-7 years. The opposite happened, therefore something was wrong with the imported wisdom and despite the moral integrity of the troika (the troika is not Greeks, that should give you some confidence.)