@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

@radx @enoch @eric3579

For one thing, give the executive or legislative power over the printing press in a crisis and they will not willingly give that power up and end up abusing it. For another, if you're simply printing money to spend then you depreciate and inflate your currency commensurately, at least in the long term. Relying heavily on this is the kind of thing that Venezuela does. There's a reason that governments instead take on their fiscal spending as debt. On that I would say, I've also become much more skeptical of fiscal stimulus in general but particularly in corrections or recessions. I'm okay with automatic stabilizers (unemployment benefits, the largely limitless kind with strings attached we have here in Australia) but not so much direct fiscal stimulus.

The fundamental issue to me is large, even extremely large fiscal spending will not affect business confidence levels of economic conditions. There is some fiscal multiplier effects (the multiple of the effect on national income over the spending injection by the government) but the worse economic conditions are, the lower this will be. Also, yes with say infrastructure spending, you're creating immediate jobs. Problem is these are in no way permanent jobs and simply pushes the can down the road on them finding new employment. Better to provide unemployment benefits and training to get them into a more permanent job faster.

Also large bouts of spending (again to use infrastructure as an example) tends to be hugely wasteful. Good projects require appraisals, consultation and careful planning. The notion of handfuls of 'shovel ready' projects is a political myth. You can instead span it out but then you don't get the mooted fiscal boost. In fact I would argue infrastructure spending is never appropriate as fiscal stimulus. It should be in a constant, planned process of improvement irrespective of business cycles or downturns. The US stimulus under Obama was largely long term spending projects like this as giveaways to the states. There is little evidence it eased the recovery or altered behaviour though. Many states simply enacted the same civic projects they would have otherwise and used this money instead of issuing debt like they would have otherwise - effectively they saved on interest.

So what are the alternatives then? The government here in Australia also heavily spent on roads, home subsidies and schools but notably also gave all income earners a cash deposit of AUD $300-950. The latter is probably the closest you can get to a pure fiscal stimulus - immediately cash to spend, injected not into banks than might save it but given particularly to low / medium income earners most likely to spend it. Again what we saw is that it hardly altered consumer / household behaviour. Many saved it, many spent it on large one off purchases (e.g. TVs, in which case most of that value was transferred overseas). So we gave a dollop of cash as stimulus to the global economy of which Australia is a drop in the ocean. Basically my attitude is, if you maintain good infrastructure, effective education systems, adequate but efficient regulation, reasonable tax rates, and importantly competitive markets, the best way to get through a crisis is to let the market stabilize by itself. Provide assistance and retraining to workers who lose their jobs by all means, but don't expect government spending to be some kind of savior.

I agree on the inflation aspect of your post. There were certainly no shortage of self-declared monetarists buying up gold in anticipation of high inflation, but as you say dollops of cash in the economy are meaningless if they are idle and the economy under capacity. The question now with unemployment in the US at 5.5% whether capacity is finally pushing LRAS levels. Probably not, participation rate is low and falling, and the unemployment rate is woefully underrepresenting forced part timers. Also as you mention the dip in oil will temper prices on the input cost side. The Fed certainly seems to think so and has started tightening rates but as so much commentary in the investing world is saying, this may turn out to be a mistake and they may end up having to reverse course.

Apologies, I got carried away... wall of text incoming.

@RedSky

I agree, monetary policy at low rates has very little to offer in terms of economic stimulus. Then again, the focus almost solely on monetary policy is part of the problem. Fiscal policy can have a massive impact, both directly (government purchases of goods and services) and indirectly (increase in automatic stabilizers). But for that you either need to be in control of your central bank, so that you can engage in Overt Monetary Financing ("printing" money). Or you need the blessing of the private banks, which is particularly true for a Vollgeld system.

The budget is the core of a parliamentary democracy, and to be at the whim of the folks at Deutsche Bank, HSBC or Credit Suisse -- no, thank you very much. We saw how that played out in Greece.

Anyway, the central bank can do miraculous things: if it provides funds to the democratically elected body in charge of the budget, aka parliament/the government. Trying to "motivate" the private banks to stock up on cheap reserves to stimulate lending is just a sign of ideology.

The great Michal Kalecki, in his essay The Political Aspects of Full Employment, summarized the general issue of government spending quite clearly. The industrial leaders stand in opposition to government spending aimed at full employment for three distinct reasons: a) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; b) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); c) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.

I'd say control over your currency is too great a tool to leave it in the hands of unelected managers. Clement Attlee knew very well why he had to nationalize the Bank of England in '46.

Back to the issue of inflation, I'd like to make two points. First, how big a role should inflation really play when talking policy. Second, what's the influence of a central bank on inflation.

Where does it come from, this focus on inflation. People usually talk about government spending when discussing inflation. Private spending is rarely brought up, even though it can be just as inflationary. So let's ignore private spending for a moment and talk purely government spending: should a deficit/surplus not be judged primarily by how well it helps us achieve our macroeconomic goals? Or more clearly, why should we sacrifice full employment or our general welfare on the altar of inflation? Yes, that's over the top. But so is the angst of inflation.

I'd say let's stick with Abba Lerner's concept of functional finance and judge deficits/surpluses purely by how well they help us achieve our macroeconomic goals. Besides, the US has run massive deficits during the GFC, so much in fact, that a great number of monetarists saw hyperinflation just around the corner. Still waiting for it. Same for Japan. Massive deficits... and deflation.

As long as spending, both private and government, doesn't push the economy beyond its limits (full employment, real resources, production capacity), out-of-control inflation just doesn't materialize. Plus, suppressing inflation is actually one thing central banks can do quite well. Unlike causing inflation, which both Japan and the EU are showcases off. Draghi can dance naked on the table, monetary policy (QE, mainly) won't push inflation upwards.

Which brings me to the second point: what's inflation, what's the cause of inflation, how can central banks manipulate it.

CPI is often used as a measure of inflation, but I prefer the GDP deflator. CPI doesn't account for externalities that you cannot influence, whatever you do. Prime case: the price of oil. Monetary policy of the Bank of Sweden has no influence on the price of oil. The GDP inflator, however, accounts for every economic activity within your currency zone -- much more useful.

General theory says, this measure of inflation goes up when demand surpasses supply. And vice versa. The primary factor of demand is domestic purchasing power, therefore wages. If you suppress wages, you suppress inflation. If you push wages, you push inflation. More specifically, you can see a direct correlation between unit labour costs and the GDP deflator in every country at any time. Here's a general graph for multiple countries, and the St. Louis FED provides a beauty for the US.

That's why it's easy for central banks to combat inflation, but almost impossible to fight deflation.

@gorillaman, I admit I'm veering close to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but equally, I never claimed that all feminists were sane and moral people.

The difference is, I think most people these days are reasonably feminist and I think the vast majority of them are not man-hating nutjobs. There's undoubtedly a lunatic fringe, but that's the case for every group/ideology.

I also agree that meanings change over time. "national socialism", shorn of its historic baggage, doesn't sound that terrible. But we know that what it actually signifies is actually national fascism, racism and other abhorrent concepts.

The question is at what point the lunatic fringe comes to represent the whole. For example, at one point the Republicans were once the party of small government and fiscal conservatism, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult to describe them as anything other than the party of religious nutjobs and idiots.

I don't feel feminism has been hijacked to the same extent. I believe there are still a lot of normal rational people who describe themselves as feminists (I'd like to think I'm one, for a start).

Finally, I'm with Joss Whedon.... "feminism" is a terrible word, but ultimately, "You either believe women are people or you don't. It's that simple."

Um...try reading again. I see now that the English language is apparently hard for you. Here, I'll go ahead and quote it for you...."I re-read my entire post, and not a single vulgar word IMO. One abbreviation of a vulgar word." I guess when I wrote "one abbreviation of a vulgar word" you read that as "no sign of vulgar language, even abbreviated". You might want to go back to Cambridge and take English 101.

Ahhh, I see...well then a big old F- You right back to you for all your ridiculous vulgar insulting bullshit.

You might want to learn English as it's used...and you might want to look in a mirror. I'm WRITING to someone who not only seemingly doesn't know to read or use the English language, and he's been a smarmy douche about it to boot. "Fuck you" is vulgar, "Hillary is not a convict" is not vulgar. By your definition, your entire post thread is vulgar, as it is certainly lacking sophistication or good taste, is totally unrefined, ignorant, hateful, now vitriolic, sesquipedalian in the extreme, completely devoid of fiscal responsibility or even consideration, and is lacking in all common sense. It is, indeed, the exact mindset of people in a Fox bubble. (Yeah, Fox, you know, that world wide political news giant you claim to have never heard of...talk about ignorance...holy crap, that's not just ignorant, it's ignant. Look that one up.)

So you know what people mean when they say -Vulgar : Making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude:

Perhaps you forgot that you clearly wrote that what you specifically meant by 'vulgar' was "cursing", not "Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined"...obviously you didn't read your own post, or thought I didn't have the capability to remember. So sad for you. Again, just like Fox bubble people, when your argument is torn to shreds, you just change what you claim your argument was and move on to make more unsophisticated argument.

I'm pretty sure you've broken or burnt out your bulb there, buddy. You WERE amusing until you were contradicted and you got angry and decided to move from being just smarmy on to silly, infantile, completely wrong ad hom attacks against someone you don't know rather than discussion. It's totally not above me to aggravate someone of such a '6 year old spoiled little girl' disposition, but it's not something I intend to spend much time on.

I think you better quit the internet, you're totally doing it wrong.

You've just lost a 'friend' here, one that's helped you repeatedly here already. You can go stamp your feet and scream at the walls in your room now. Expect no further help from me in navigating the site...and expect to be banned if you continue the ad hom attacks against me.

@dannym3141
well said mate,and i agree that @radx is the man who can best explain this situation,though @RedSky is quite adept as well.

@bobknight33
don't let those fearmongers get to you man.
the deficit hawks use household analogies to make their point and this is not only a fear tactic but a disingenuous one at that,or just plain dishonest.

how you and i run our households is NOTHING like how a government runs finances.yet that is the comparative example they use over and over and over.so it is no surprise that many people may be a tad freaked out when they look at those massive numbers.

if we compare republican vs democrat over the past few decades,democrats have proven to be the better pick in regards to fiscal responsibility.

we live in bizzarro universe where rhetoric has the exact opposite outcome when applied to reality.

what i would really like to know,and not ONE candidate will even mention it:military spending.

the budget keeps going up.
by some estimates the military counts for 25% of all tax revenue but when you factor in ALL military/defense/intelligence it is closer to 50%.

YET....

soldiers benefits keep decreasing.
their health care harder and harder to obtain.(never mind the mental health care of our soldiers,which is criminal).
soldier suicide is at an all time high in over a century.
homelessness of our veterans is an embarrassment.

yet the military budget keeps getting higher and not one politician will even dare breath a word.even sanders record is not exactly stellar in this regard.

maybe if our political class stopped engaging in the practice of empire,we could re-invest in our own country.

There are far better qualified and knowledgeable people on here (@radx) who could explain that, but i'll try and explain why the video isn't bullshit.

Let's say the government spends a certain amount of money to build a road. That money goes a lot further than you think it does.
- whoever you pay to build it pays taxes on what they earn
- same for whoever you buy the materials/machinery from
- the road will probably be used by individuals and businesses spending money, so you've made that easier for them
- businesses stay afloat and keep trading, people's skills/training are not lost as they become unemployed
- saved yourself a whole bunch of money you would have had to spend in unemployment welfare

Because governments are not like people, they CAN spend money they don't have, to buy things that save them money! It's a simplistic analysis of a road and i'm no road building expert, but the term is "fiscal multiplication" and is used by governments to evaluate an investment. Governments are not like households, they can borrow £1.00 and get £2.00 back from it or more. For example over here in Britain there is a significant housing shortage, and one way of resolving that is by borrowing to invest in affordable & social housing. I think it was suggested that for every £1 spent on house building generates £2.50 back into the economy.

America is a sovereign nation that issues its own floating currency. Greece was not. There is no chance whatsoever of America, UK, Japan etc. becoming like Greece. Anyone saying that's possible is either scaremongering or heard it from someone who was.

I'm not saying the money has been spent or invested correctly, corruption and cronyism is rife in western politics. But that's an argument against government corruption rather than one against investment and debt. This isn't the first time we've tried austerity, it also isn't the highest debt-GDP ratio has been either for the US or the UK. The lessons of history have been you can't cut your way to prosperity, you have to invest towards it. That's the weight of economic thought right now afaik.

Meh. How about you try and answer your own questions.

Would YOU blame Bush?

No? because he's only one person who doesn't have absolute control over congress or the fiscal policies they put forth?

Recently, you've mentioned how K Street lobbyists have their claws in everyone..

Does that include all 301 Republicans currently in Congress?

Or are those people magically exempt from the influence of: millions in campaign donations, gifts/perks, & guaranteed, cushy, post-congressional careers?

If so, would Democrats automatically become immune from corruption if they switched parties?

Omg, one party solution! China was right.
(I'm mean.. except for the dirty Commie thing.)

If we just eliminate Democrats and liberals, everything will be fixed!
*pat pat* You're a genius! little buddy.

FWIW, I think it is sincere. Varoufakis has two points. 1) Austerity is contractionary. Forcing Greece to raise taxes, cut pensions and run escalating fiscal surpluses makes it impossible for Greece ever to grow its economy sufficiently to pay off its debt. (The debt is likely unpayable in any case, but Greece is being subject to needless suffering and endless debt peonage because Schaeuble and the lenders refuse to cede any ground.) 2) It's not possible for every country to emulate Germany and run a trade surplus, because one country's surplus is another's deficit. If you expect other countries to buy more from you than you buy from them, the money has to come from somewhere. In other words, if it's your policy to run a trade surplus then you will have to finance your trade partners somehow.

First of all, Flassbeck is the only(!) prominent economist in Germany arguing strictly against the madness of austerity. But he's living in the border region between France and Switzerland, so he's a European more than a German.

Among all the economic think tanks in Germany, only the union-sponsored IMK makes a credible case against this madness. Everyone else is more or less in line with the neoclassic perspective. Not a Keynesian in sight, much less a post-Keynesian group.

But now to the meat of the issue. There will be no major political shift in Germany in the near future. As Flassbeck stated, only a single party opposes the financial inquisition commonly known as the Troika. Unfortunatly, it's the socialists, and despite overwhelmingly popular policies, they are still an absolute no-go for large swaths of the demos thanks to the authoritarian regime in East Germany. Sucks, but it is what it is.

So it's up to the French people once again to save the continent from itself. Noone else has the balls or the influence to put an end to this misguided union. How likely is it for the French government to openly challenge German hegemony soon? I wouldn't bet on it. Which means the Greeks are fuuuucked².

In any case, what would it take for Greece to stabilise? And by stabilise I'm talking about a return to a manageable level of unemployment, a working healthcare system and social safety net. A conservative guesstimate would be a public deficit of ~10% of GDP for at least 5 straight years. Alternatively, the EIB would have to prop up Greece with €50b a year for the same number of years. To get a working bureaucracy, to undo four decades of nepotism, Greece would basically need a generation to reestablish itself as a state – and it would require appropriate financing.

Now remember which of Syriza's demands is painted as most controversial right now: debt restructuring. Debt restructuring, while neccessary at some point, is entirely pointless as long as the fiscal policy remains contractionary. Greece needs austerity to stop, right the fuck now. Greece needs to provide income-generating jobs for its people. All the talk about debt is utterly pointless, because at 25% unemployment, we're looking at permanent damage in every way imaginable. The social toll alone should be completely unacceptable within Europe if we truly gave two shits about human dignity.

So, even if Syriza get their way tomorrow, Greece would still be flushed down the shitter. Syriza's proposal is contractionary. Any primary surplus in this situation is contractionary.

Greece is done within the Euro. The use of a foreign currency makes it impossible to use appropriate fiscal policy on their own. Unfortunatly, but also intentionally, the currency issuer, the ECB, is placed outside the democratic control of the European Parliament, or any national parliament for that matter. Fiscal policy within the EZ was taken out of the control of our elected representatives to ensure that the neoclassic/neoliberal approach was irrevocably built into the system. We can thank Germany for that, by the way.

There is a shortage of spending in Greece. There is a shortage of spending in Spain. There is a shortage of spending in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France. There is a shortage of spending in Germany, for fuck's sake. Put the ECB under control of the EP, add full employment (2-3% unemployment) to its mandate, and have them finance the appropriate programs at the national level. The output gap in Europe is so massive, the un(der)employment so vast, they could spend a trillion Euros and inflation would still not reach the agreed upon target value of 2%.

All it would take to change the rules is consent from every national parliament in the union. Might as well go skinny-dipping instead.

Remember Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts"? a quote:
Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes a day. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How could this be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given: "I want to see what he'll say next."

Maybe Trump has the same thing going for him. He's crazy enough and ego-inflated enough to serve the "Ross Perot" or "Ralph Nader" role in losing the election for his party.

I'm all in favor of that, as someone who would tend to agree with a lot of the foundation principles of the Republican party, like "small government" and "fiscal conservatism". The problem is that the modern Republican party has exchanged those "foundation principles" with batshit crazy counterparts. It needs to go ahead and implode already to let some measure of sanity back in.

That's what's left on the table, isn't it? I'd divide the exit option into orderly and disorderly, but the core of it remains the same.

Yet we have to keep in mind, Syriza was elected on a program diametrically opposed to the troika demands. And an EZ exit is equally far outside its mandate. Not to mention that a significant portion of Syriza is made up of former PASOK supporters, who would need a whole lot of convincing to vote for an EZ exit.

A referendum sounds decent enough, but they should have a strategy in place for the post-EZ time. Merely getting rid of the Euro won't get them out of the shit. In fact, I'd argue that a clear strategy is an absolute neccessity to even get a "favorable" outcome from any referendum. The public needs to have a clear picture of what awaits them behind any choice they might be presented with.

For starters, they should be perfectly clear about what it would take to get the Greek economy started again. Greece has very little to offer at this time, so every effort must be made to improve the domestic market. Plans for rebuilding its productive base should be worked out prior to any referendum. Industrial policy spanning at least 5-10 years would be needed.

Question is: can a non-EZ Greece muster up enough political capital to run the vast fiscal programs required to pull the economy out of the shitter? Or would they be stuck with a recessionary focus on balanced budgets, just like the rest of us?

In any case, within the constraints of a monetary union with neo-mercantilist Germany, Greece will not get the fiscal expansion it needs and will remain a shithole, just shy of a failed state.

If you truly like this site, why do you constantly and consistently denigrate it in your comments?
I would bet that at least 90% of internet trolls would say the same thing...'I'm not a troll, I just hate (or-"have to hold my nose at posting" of 'X') most everything and everyone on or about this site and I'm going to tell you about what I see as it's problems and foibles daily. I have every right to express my opinion.'...yes, you have a right...but they way you go about it makes you a troll, IMO.

If I went to a right wing leaning message board and, daily, told them what misguided morons they all are, and how the site is worthless because it's nothing more than a bastion for the idiot right and all the misguided, America hating morons in it, I would be a troll. It would be obvious that I would not be intending to change minds, only to insult and lambast those I disagree with.

Please to explain...how are you different in the way you post here?

EDIT: Ultra left DOJ!!!! I was rolling on the floor at that one buddy, good one.
Almost as funny as you calling yourself "conservative"...what you are is a neo-con...which means you want to return to a past that never existed...a "new" (imaginary) past you wish to conserve...therefore "neo-con".
I am actually an old school republican, which are fiscally 'conservative' (which means we try to conserve our funds by spending them wisely on programs that save money as a whole, like upkeep of infrastructure...not the same thing as removing all spending/taxation)
-and a social liberal (Yes, real republicans are (were) anti-war, anti-corporatist, anti-religion in government, pro-environment, pro-freedom to choose your own morality, actual thinkers. Regan changed all that 180 deg. Now I have NO party that represents me. It's hilarious to hear you guys call me a "lefty" over and over!)

The bits and pieces that I've seen of Greece's new list of reforms includes a measure that is strikingly similar to this.

Good stuff. Even officials from Austria went down to Zagreb to check out this system, so kudos to our Croatian comrades for this "invention" of theirs.