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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (110273)	1/28/2015 3:02:51 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218462

Greece does not belong to the EU and it was a mistake in the first place to accept them.

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (110273)	1/28/2015 3:54:13 PM
From: bart13	1 Recommendation Recommended By Follies Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218462

The US moved from #6 to #12 in economic freedom during Obama's terms. cnsnews.com Thanks "left wingers" and Obama! /sarc

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (110273)	1/28/2015 4:09:59 PM
From: KyrosL	1 Recommendation Recommended By 3bar Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218462

My brother, who lives in Greece, used to complain bitterly about the bureaucracy of the tax system there. We compare notes about taxes over there and in the USA in my annual visits to Greece. For the last couple of years his complaints have stopped about the system, though not about the high taxes. From what I have seen there has been a huge improvement in Greece's tax collection system, probably under the prodding of the Troika. He can file his taxes electronically via an app provided free by the Greek IRS. His salary and most other income such as rents is electronically reported to the IRS. A lot is already pre-filed in the forms when he logs on to the app to file his taxes. All money transactions in Greece now require a tax number which uniquely identify the individuals doing the transaction. This feeds directly into the Greek IRS system -- the scope for bribery is greatly reduced. Cheating is now confined to those running individual businesses, but if they cheat, they must keep their money under the mattress and are unable to buy any property, cars, or expensive items with it. Trying to get the money to foreign countries is becoming very hard because there are cross reporting treaties among almost all countries nowadays. At this point my guess is that tax cheating in the US exceeds tax cheating in Greece as a percent of GDP. Now on to Greek politics. I think Tsipras chose ANEL as a partner because his first goal is to renegotiate with Europe and his and ANEL's positions with regard to those negotiations are very close. He will probably discard ANEL and go with one of the leftist or center-left pro-European parties once those negotiations are over. In any case, in Greece right-wing does not mean the same as in the USA. Rightists in Greece are as fond of large government as leftists, and they are not averse to distributing money to (their) voters. The only difference that I can tell is a social one. Rightists are religious and very nationalistic and traditionalist. Leftist are atheist, internationalist in outlook (for example, they would help illegal immigrants), they are for gay civil marriage, etc., and against tradition. Tsipras is not married to his partner, but they have lived together for many years and have two kids.