Greece Should Call Europe's Bluff
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Source: The Real News.com
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By Protagoras, Dolores at Jul 08, 2011 20:00 PM
I have been living in Greece and working in the National Health system for over 20 yrs. I appreciate your educated understanding of the inability of the system to extract what is due from the ruling classes. However, only last year did a government take the trouble to tally the number of public sector workers ( hired with unbridled abandon) who amount to almost 800 000 in a nation of 12 million , while Spain with a population of 40 mil has 1 mil civil servants. The insurance fund of the electric company and telephone company employees (public utilities) is subsidized by the state (that is, the taxpayers) with $2 billion a year. The public railways have a payroll 3 times larger than their proceeds and a deficit of $ 1.4 billion each year, also covered by the state. Female civil servants may retire after 25 yrs of work from age 50, with a life expectancy of 35 yrs, obviously burdening the taxpayer. Can you believe that Greek orthodox priests are civil servants with a regular government salary.
I agree that the rich should pay their fair share but I am afraid that this will just fall into that bottomless pit
Dolores Protagoras, MD
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Re: Greece
By Primc, Matic at Jul 10, 2011 09:26 AM
The public utilities are little use to citizens if they are being run for profit anyway so it is only right and proper that they are subsidised if only they are being run competently (trains come on time and in remote locations, insurance does in fact get paid, electricity is regular without great waste and not much ecologic devastation).
The alternative is to: 1. Privatize insurance which will get profitable by either raising insurance costs (transfering the costs to the poorest) or not paying out the insurance (scamming the customers(ofcourse you only scam the poor because the rich are going to sue)), there is no other way for them to beak even (private insurance also tend to have far higher administrative costs then public ones and also have to make profit for shareholdes so they actually take more money to run - except that people pay it directly and not through the state). 2. Privatize Rails which can only break even by raising fares (transfering the costs to the poor who actually use the rail), by reducing or denying service to non profitable areas (again transfering costs to the poor who now have to get cars to get anywhere) or by skipping paying for safety (all 3 is what usually happens in rail privatizations). Obviously transfering costs to the less well off is going to increase inequality and is not a way to make a better society therefore it is only sensible to tax the rich to the extent that it will cover the hole if such a hole exists. Since the rich have not been paying taxes for decades it may be fair to just give them a one time property tax with which to pay off the debt on top of the raised taxes which will be used to balance the budget from year to year.
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