What the hell is the Greek People's Problem?

Maybe the Greeks do believe that they are broke. If so it would be rational for them to just repudiate their debts instead of borrowing more money to try to pay them. Other countrys like Argentina do this every now and then so why not them.

 

You think it's easy to stay in the "top echelon"?

People who win the lottery and blow thru millions in a couple years only to be back on welfare are proof positive that the average person isn't capable of handling wealth.

It takes a great amount of time, effort and responsibility just to maintain wealth.

Only the non-wealthy think being rich is easy.

 

What? It's so easy. Just put it into an investment fund, or if you're richer, compile your own team. It'll beat the markets and you'll be fine..

How is it hard, again?

 

Yeah. It's so easy that's why Chinese citizens as soon as they get rich enough secretly squirrel their money away in Canada and then flee there, by latest Chinese economist estimates for every dollar of Foreign investment in China, a domestic dollar is laundered out of the country.

 

Source? I love how my being Chinese turns every argument into something of my nation. Hilarious.

I hold most of my bonus in Hong Kong and Singapore, oh the perks of dual-citizenship.

 

It's not like the investment you're putting your money into won't fail, or acquiring the money to begin with isn't hard if you're Low/Middle class and what about the chances of something serious happening in your life that forces you to withdraw your investment?

Wealth isn't exactly something you throw money at some program and become a Mega Millionaire... hell if that were the case we would be all envious the Trillionaires.

 

It kind of won't. I mean its a multi-billion dollar firm that's job is to not fail and deliver a return. If you have enough to put serious numbers into an investment portfolio, I'm sure you have insurance— be it home, auto or health.

That wasn't my argument. It was that wealth is hard to maintain, which is obviously false, unless you're stupid.

 

Thought you were simply suggesting the gaining of wealth was easy to attain and that by my 80s I should have 150 Million in the bank. Glad that is clarified...

 

Need more?

Hong Kong is an outlier and only exists because of a quirk of history, not because of any policy the Chinese engaged in.

 

They be hatin'.

I hate you. Now I'm a conservative.

 

The Chinese expatriate fled that failed system and now exploits this one, while at the same time demanding it be transformed.

 

Wasn't this thread about Greece?

 

The OP is asking the wrong question...

The PIIG countries got raped by the EU, and they're going to get more raped once the IMF gets ahold of them.

The best thing Greece can do right now is leave the EU.

 

It's about the failure of yet another welfare state.

 

Yeah, Greece is a failed state, that's what socialism does to good people. Is there really anything else that needs to be said?

 

Socialism isn't what failed them. Transitioning to a currency that increased their cost of living without raising their wages is what failed.

The EU works among nations of similar standards of living. It doesn't work too well with poorer nations like Greece and Portugal.

If anything, this is a lesson that a North American Union would be a horrible idea.

 

Oh, so it was just the collectivist union that failed them, got it.

 

No, it is the failure of a country where the corruption was extreme. A country where the accounts were fasified by the last government. There isn't any relation of the welfare state.

Learn the next: If you don't have a welfare state you will have extreme poverty like in Chile, Argentina... Like all South America. Don't you know that USA from you're applying the laissez-faire you have greater unemployment index and lower adquisitive power? And it is the only beginning of deregulating the markets.

And, the welfare states like Sweeden, Switzerland, FInland, Norway, Canada are the most advanced countries in democracy and rights of the people. So sorry, but here doesn't have any relation the wellfare.

And as I said, what is being asked to Greece is a sacking, pillaging made by the IMF and Europe. Is the lost of any freedom and the condemn to extreme poverty of the people, while the rich become richer. That is the reality.

And obviously the people won't leave to pass it. And I expect that the Greece is the beginning of a Global Revolution for a real democracy, where the people is the most important.

 

Greece wasn't socialist. Was capitalist. Period.

 

Nah, the people in the streets were the ones sitting on their asses thanks to fewer and fewer people paying their way.

 

Yes. And there is a difference.

Socialism clearly hasn't failed Scandinavia. It hasn't failed us either, unless you're suggesting that all roads should be private and that the military should be as well.

The vast majority of societies are a mix of socialism and capitalism. While Greece's entitlement programs were unrealistic in terms of retirement age, what really hurt them the most involved international bankers -- in much the same way that Iceland, Portugal, and Ireland took hits.

The EU basically milked these countries for what they were worth -- primarily through unregulated capitalism, rather than socialism.

 

No country has private roads and militiaries. To suggest they are all socialist is crap.

Scandanavian countries are closed racially and culturally.

They are small ponds.

 

Socialism = public investment in a public amenity or service.

I'm getting the impression you guys are confusing socialism with communism.

 

No it's not. It's the transfer of wealth in the pursuit of equal outcomes and central management and control of as much of the economy as possible.

Your bastardizing the language would make any country with a public road socialist.

 

That's the problem, the level of socialism in Europe is quite a bit different than the US. Viewing them through our lense they are more socialist than we are.

Concepts like rampant entitlements are socialist methods of redistributing wealth through the state.