Hypocritical Germans refuse to aid the countries that aided them

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

You're right, it's not a Scandinavian thing. All the North European countries (even France, to some degree) have the same smug attitude and feel entitled to educate those lazy southerners about how to best manage their economy.

Well that is because those countries are actually able to manage their economies...

The problem with the anti-austerity camp is that so far I've never seen anyone of you present any options to the current policy. Do you want to keep pouring money into Greece indefinably with-out any sort of counter requirements?

That is like giving money to someone who has gambled away all their money in Vegas, that will just gamble away the money once you give it to them. It's not social justice, it's idiocy.

It's not that we shouldn't help those who are in a weaker position economically than we are, indeed I believe strongly that we must help them. But the help should be in order to reconstruct them, so that they eventually can stand on their own feet, and in order for that to happen they must do what they themselves are able to do to achieve that goal. It's all really simple, and can be applied to individual citizens, as well as countries.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

This is all well and good, but you still have to explain how austerity has helped Greece "reconstruct itself, so that it can eventually stand on its own feet". In fact, it has achieved the exact opposite! Even Greek debt is bigger now than when the crisis began!

So I'm not an economist and I can't tell for sure which policies are going to work in solving Greece's economic problems (although cracking down on corruption and tax evasion, which is what Tsipras has vowed to do, certainly can help a lot), but anyone can easily tell which policies haven't worked.

You guys are hilarious, trying to defend failed policies through strawmen of other policies nobody has argued for.

Now who is using strawmen? I'm certainly not defending Samaras or his policies, or holding him up as an example to be followed, and I don't really see anyone else doing so either. It is clear that tax evasion and corruption are two big issues that need to be handled for Greece to get back up. Obviously you have to have an income. If you collect no money it doesn't really matter how much you cut your spending, we all now that. New Democracy's failure to tackle those problems is a failure indeed, and I don't mourn their passing one bit.

I do hope that Tsipras will follow through and try his best to accomplish something on both tax evasion and corruption. But what if he doesn't? What if his government just raises the spending limit and don't actually do something to collect more revenue? Do you still think they should be handed money unconditionally? That is the central question. The Greek state will never reform, if they know that they can just carry on as always and just get saved by Northern Europe. The money they get need to be conditioned.   

You see I don't like austerity because I believe the Greeks need to be punished, or because I think it is a useful lesson for them. But what I do believe, and what I feel very strongly in my gut, is that you don't get to spend money you don't have, and then expect someone else to come and pick up the tab for you. That is why there is a need both to curve spending and to raise income by collecting tax revenue. If that is your goal, people should help you get there, but not if you intend to sail by.

The problem with the anti-austerity camp is that so far I've never seen anyone of you present any options to the current policy. Do you want to keep pouring money into Greece indefinably with-out any sort of counter requirements?

Do you mean people on this forum? There are competent and more skilled people out there proposing other alternatives. Another question is that you can agree or not with one proposal or another. Personally, I don't believe that the solution is pouring money indefinitely in exchange for nothing. Varoufakis seems to be in the same opinion, since he says that Greece doesn't need more "doses of dope" (loans) to pronlong its agony. My impression is that he is saying that Greece needs some air to breathe, as well as he's willing to undertake reforms in his country. On the other hand, it's easy to check (even for non-experts) that austerity has been extremely costly (both socially and economically), aside an utter failure.

I generally meant people on this forum yes.
As I said, I believe we should help Greece out, but only if they themselves help them out. Now I'm not saying that should happen with spending cuts only, major structural reform is needed much more. But that doesn't mean the Troika and Germany is wrong for giving the  Greece conditions for their loans, that just means their conditions are wrong, and that I'm willing to concede, but that doesn't mean that Greece should all of a sudden be given a Get Out of Debt Free Card, it just means that the conditions should be renegociated.       
   

       

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Gut feelings don't make for sound policy, though. And yes, if the alternative is between spending money you don't have and depriving your citizens of the most basic services, cutting their wages to 3rd world levels and letting them sink into absolute destitution, the first option is preferable. Besides the fact that austerity is inhumane, it doesn't even work for the narrow goal that has always been set for it, as it ends up causing a depression that makes the debt even worse. To cling to this idea just because your guts tell you it's right is not only immoral, it's stupid even by a strictly economic standpoint.

What exactly is morality if not gut feelings, Antonio? Is there a scientific calculation for what counts as good moral? I fail to see how one gut feeling is more correct than another.

My point still stands true. The anti-austerity crowd on here can't present a single option except to keep giving money to them, and hope they do the right thing. Then what? Call that a strawman if you want, but then also present what your alternative line of action is.

If a government can be as populist as it pleases, promising everything to everyone without considering if they can actually afford it, and be allowed to run the country into the ground with-out any consequences, because someone will always be there to bail you out, eventually there will be no one left who can bail out, and we will all  eventually sink into absolute destitution. 

The problem with the anti-austerity camp is that so far I've never seen anyone of you present any options to the current policy.

Piketty for example defends a progressive one-time tax on private capital, or failing that, inflation.

I'm not sure how a one-time tax on capital would be implemented, but if someone tries and succeed, bless their soul. Inflation, or rather devaluation, has always been the best option, but it requires that Greece leaves the Euro. Which it of course might very well do in near future.   



 

 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Gut feelings don't make for sound policy, though. And yes, if the alternative is between spending money you don't have and depriving your citizens of the most basic services, cutting their wages to 3rd world levels and letting them sink into absolute destitution, the first option is preferable. Besides the fact that austerity is inhumane, it doesn't even work for the narrow goal that has always been set for it, as it ends up causing a depression that makes the debt even worse. To cling to this idea just because your guts tell you it's right is not only immoral, it's stupid even by a strictly economic standpoint.

What exactly is morality if not gut feelings, Antonio? Is there a scientific calculation for what counts as good moral? I fail to see how one gut feeling is more correct than another.

My point still stands true. The anti-austerity crowd on here can't present a single option except to keep giving money to them, and hope they do the right thing. Then what? Call that a strawman if you want, but then also present what your alternative line of action is.

If a government can be as populist as it pleases, promising everything to everyone without considering if they can actually afford it, and be allowed to run the country into the ground with-out any consequences, because someone will always be there to bail you out, eventually there will be no one left who can bail out, and we will all  eventually sink into absolute destitution.

Thankfully over thousands of years humanity has been able to conceive moral principles slightly more articulate and sound than those based on gut feelings. It's a shame you appear to be stuck in this primary state.

I don't need to present a fully fleshed alternative (though many brilliant economists have, SWL is right that you should check out Piketty), because austerity is objectively worse than any of the conceivable alternatives from any perspective. Since you seem so concerned about Greece reforming itself, you should be the one coming up with a reasonable solution to achieve this goal. Because austerity hasn't achieved that outcome.

Oh baloney! There is no such thing as a universal set of moral principles conceived through-out human history. If you want me to believe that you consciously deliberate on philosophical principles and different theories through-out history when you're deciding if you think something is right or wrong, you must take me for a simpleton. You go by the gut, you just think your own gut is more correct than everybody else.

As to what I think should be done, firstly I believe Greece should try to arrange a manageable walk away from the Euro. Greece needs to be able to control their own monetary policies so that they can change it to suit the situation in the country.  Then they should devalue their currency so that Greek export become cheap and thereby increase the appeal for Greek products, and make tourism cheap, hopefully giving a kick-start to the economy. After that they should do a tax-review where they come up with an effective tax system, and a plan on how they manage to collect that tax-revenue from tax evaders. Then they should adjust their expenditures to that, prioritizing healthcare, education, police and justice, and infrastructure, cutting everything else that cannot be properly financed.   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

To put this in perspective, in the US, which has a functioning internal labour market, little welfare, much more homogeneity economically AND a common language and culture, the richer states still pay roughly the equivalent of the largest Greek bailout from Germany. Every year. As a constant state of affairs, more or less. That's what monetary union is. Once people realize this they might also realize how ridiculous it is to try and sustain this nonsense.

So you also support disbanding the US?

Why not? We could use its disbanding to solve the Greek crisis. I see the Transatlantic Kingdom of Greecissippi in fron of me right now.