Organizing healthcare better would save you money, not cost you. Nationalism is self-blinding. Nothing against local-patriotism, but this flag waving schtick is so.. nineteenth century. "I love my country and believe in god therefore im right" got us all into two world wars. If you love your country take care of the people that live in it and dont be a nuisance to others.

The question is, would what Bernie wants really be better? Are Bernies supporters less blind than Trumps? Who knows?

Ah the good old days... Like the great depression, two world wars, TV dinners, women's right to vote, racism, the cold war, disco, perms, MTV's The Real World.

What about freedom of speech? That would make for a pretty good day.

It's a discussion we've been having in this country for as long as I can remember and was one of the prime arguments made for a vast set of reforms a decade ago. And I still don't buy it.

At the very basic level, the argument is that a declining percentage of working age people have to pay for an increasing number of pensions. But that's only half the story. The working age population has to generate enough output to sustain not just themselves and retirees, but also children, the unemployed, the sick, anyone not working. A shrinking population means less children, and most importantly less unemployed. Increases in productivity are more than enough to compensate for that, no need to increase birth rates or immigration.

Germany is regularly paraded around as a country in dire need of immigration, given our low birth rate. Even if we ignore for a minute that any 50 year population forecast of the past has been invalidated after maybe 5 years, the "worst" they could conjure up was a decline in working age population of 34% by the year 2060. So what? That's 0.8% a year. And since it's based on a population decline of 20% over the same time, it's an annual drop of 0.2%. That's their worst case scenario, and it's statistical noise.

We've had a massive increase in average age over the last century as well as two world wars and our system managed just fine. And an annual drop of 0.2% is supposed to bring it to its knees? Pah.

Now, I'm all in favour of immigration, primarily to spice things up and prevent our society from becoming too homogeneous. But our pension system needs neither mass immigration nor an increased birth rate. What it needs is for politicians to stop funneling funds from our "PAYGO" system towards their buddies in the private sector. Current income = current payments, public system. Everything else is too volatile and susceptible to the Vampire Squids on Wall Street.

Greece accumulated debt in a foreign currency (Euro). Had they been using a free-floating currency with Greece as the sovereign issuer, it would have been much less of a problem. But that's a different discussion.

You brought up retirement benefits. These benefits have been a major talking point over here in mercantilistic Germany. Unfortunatly, a lot of inaccuracies crept into the debate over time. A closer look reveals that it's not as black and white as it is made out to be. One point at a time...

The effective retirement age, if we look at OECD stats, is basically the same for men in Greece and Germany. The age of 56 is often thrown around as the expected average retirement age for workers in Greece, but that's only for the totally messed up public sector. The average for the private sector is significantly higher, as the OECD numbers indicate.

Yet the size of retirement benefits is even more controversial. There are, in fact, some very dubious practices going on in Greece, which result in rediculous retirement benefits for a select group of people, even at very young ages. Decades of nepotism, that's what it produces. But even so, pension expenditure as a % of GDP was not significantly higher in Greece before the GFC than in Germany. When Greek GDP collapsed, expenditures as a % increased, naturally. Some have gotten absurd benefits, but the majority got a pittance. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Greece doesn't have a social safety net, unlike Germany. There is no welfare. Many people have to take early retirement at reduced benefits to have any income at all.
So I'll say it's bad in Germany. Last decade's changes to our retirement system have a metric fuckton of people (~40% of workers) heading straight into poverty when they retire. It's social security for them, and nothing else. Still, it's bliss compared to what the plebs in Greece now ended up with.

However, even all those beautiful OECD stats have to be taken with a grain of salt. Germany has a working bureaucracy. Everything is documented. Greece is a mess. Therefore, all comparisons are guesstimates at best.

Finally, as long as the Greek economy produces enough goods and services, it is for them to decide how to distribute their wealth. If they want a lavish retirement system, so be it. Our governments opted to create a true underclass of the working poor, and gutted a retirement system that made it through two world wars unscathed. If German retirees want to bitch about their benefits, it should be aimed squarely at our governments and their intentional deconstruction of our social welfare state.

At some point, yes. But for the time being, increases in productivity (automation) are less of a job killer than your everyday policies and ideologies.

Speaking of my own country, the amount of work not being done is enormous, and the aggregate of work not having been done over the last decades is absolutely staggering. The current economic system not only unloaded a great number of burdens onto society, it also never found a way to come up with a way to integrate the aforementioned work. No one is willing to pay for it, so it doesn't get done, period. The most prominent examples would be infrastructure works of all kinds (energy, most of all), ecological restauration and care for the elderly. Our national railroad alone could hire 100,000 people and still be understaffed.

You can have full employment next year, but not if you expect the private sector to provide the jobs within the current system. The public sector could create them, if you use a sovereign, free-floating currency, but ideology doesn't allow for it.

As long as we focus on finding people for a given job, there'll be mass unemployment, no matter what. Reverse the process, create/find jobs for a given people and we might make some headway.

Again, ideology doesn't allow for it. And that's also what made me stop advocating for an unconditional basic income (UBI). The financial details of it can be a nightmare, yes, and it would be a break with a social welfare system that survived two world wars. But the deal breaker for me was politics.

A UBI would mean taking the boot of the peasants' necks. Liberty and (some) equality made real. Love it.
But look at how vicious the Greeks are attacked these days, not just by the elite, but by our fellow worker bees. They're not just burying the last bit of European solidarity in Greece, they're unloading all their frustrations onto the schmucks who had very little to begin with. It's despicable. And it indicates to me that any attempt to introduce a system that would take from people the need to work would unleash unimaginable hatred from the usual suspects. And significant portions of the public would go along with it, given how easy it already is to channel their frustrations towards "welfare queens" and "moochers".

So yeah, a UBI would be lovely. Finally some liberty, finally more negotiating power for the worker (can decline any job offer without repression). But the shit would need to hit the fan hard before there can be any room within the political sphere for it.

Unfortunatly, it's not just Merkel and her cabinet. It's the press, it's the economics departments at universities, it's politicians at all levels. Call it an economic nationalism, hell-bent to defend what they know to be the moral way of doing business. Everything left of this special flavour of market fundamentalism has been systematically attacked and suppressed for at least 30 years.

For instance, our socialist party, still referred to as the fringe of what is acceptable, runs on what is basically a carbon-copy of social-democrat programmes from the '70s. Similar to the British Green Party and Labour. Krugman, Stiglitz, Baker, Wolff, DeLong -- they'd all be on the fringe in Germany. Even the likes of Simon Johnson (IMF) or Willem Buiters (City Group).

If you speak out in favour of higher inflation (wage growth) to ease the pressure on our brothers and sisters in southern Europe, you'll be charged with waging a war against German saver. "You want to devalue what little savings a nurse can accrue? Don't you support blue collar workers?"

The same blue collar workers have been stripped of their savings by 15 years of wage suppression, the same blue collar workers are looking at poverty when they retire, because the PAYGO pension system was turned into a capital-based system that only works to your benefit if you never lose your job, always pay your dues and reach at least age 95. The previous system survived two world wars without a problem, yet was deemed flawed when they realized how much money could be channeled into the financial system – only to disappear at the first sight of a crisis, eg every five to ten years.

Similarly, you could point out that a focus on trade surpluses might not be the greatest of ideas, given the dependence it creates on foreign demand, a weak currency and restricted wage growth domestically. But they'll call you a looney. "The trade surplus is a result of just how industrious our workers, how creative our scientists and how skilled our engineers are. It's all innovation, mate! Are you saying we force the others to buy our stuff? That's madness."

You simply cannot have an open discussion about macroeconomics in Germany. Do I have to mention how schizophrenic it makes me feel to read contradictory descriptions of reality every day? It's bonkers and everyone's better off NOT reading both German and international sources on these matters.


Any compromise would have to work with this in mind. They'd have to package in a way that doesn't smell like debt relief of any kind. People know that stretching the payment out over 100 years equals debt relief, but it might just be enough of a lie to get beyond the level of self-deception that is simply part of politics. If they manage to paint Varoufakis' idea of growth-based levels of payment as the best way to get German funds back, people might go for it. Not sure if our government would, but you could sell it to the public. And with enough pressure from Greece, Spain, Italy, and France most of all, maybe Merkel could be "persuaded" to agree to a deal.

As for Syriza's domestic problems: it's a one-way ticket to hell. Undoing decades of nepotism under external pressure, with insolvency knocking on your door? Best of luck.

Italy is hard on Greece's heels in terms of institutional corruption. Southern Italy, in particular, is an absolute mess. Given the size of the Italian economy, Syriza better succeed, so their work can be used as a blueprint. Otherwise we're going to need a whole lot of popcorn in the next decade...


Edit: Case in point, German position paper, as described by Reuters. As if the elections in Greece never took place.

Because we find it abhorrent and we've been against massive deaths for awhile. After two World Wars Europe came together and basically decided if they have another one it would probably be the absolute death of everyone. So they started communicating, and I know everyone has problems with the Euro, and Politics and the EU and the UN. But this is the result, the end of massive war deaths. So that's Europe.

Second is the US, basically the lone super power after World War 2 controlling about half of all the worlds wealth. After the 1960s there was a civilizing effect because of all the protests. When Vietnam started nobody knew about the body counts, heck nobody knew that we attacked south vietnam at all. So suddenly there was a demand for information about this war where our kids were dying and we were finding out that they were doing a lot of things our consciousness couldn't tolerate.

So after a ton of protesting and upheaval in the country, so much so that troops were being rerouted to come back to the US to deal with the people the government went underground. They had secret wars, which of course are illegal and immoral however much MUCH less death. They just can't do whatever the hell they want anymore, we won't put up with it.

That's why when people try and compare Iraq to Vietnam I just laugh. There are hardly any comparisons that could be justified. The amount of deaths alone and the results aren't even in the same galaxy. And the reason is one thing, public protest and pressure. Iraq was the first war in human history where there was massive protests BEFORE the war even started.

Then even the Iraqi people protested because they weren't getting a chance to choose their own leaders, have their own democracy. There was nothing about us letting them vote for anything, we didn't want to allow though, and tried whatever we could to stop it. But too many people protested, there was too much reporting done on those protests.

So this is what it is, People. We stopped it, we got up and looked at these millions of dead bodies and said ENOUGH. We're not perfect we fuck up a lot, but if you want to look at what has affected the body counts in War more than anything it's peoples reaction to it. You could say weapons caused that reaction if you want but I prefer to give the people their fair do. We know when something is wrong and we're standing up to it. All over the world it's happening now, take part.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's true - it does kind of look like ass with all of the ads splooged all over the page. After six years though - I've come to a conclusion: There's us, and there's them. There are the people we love who are the Sifters that find their way here - and there are the holipoli that rummage through our droppings as we forge a trail into the future.

That's a terrible way to think about site visitors - I know. Maybe it will be our eventual downfall - but have you seen the top 10 Google search terms that lead people to VideoSift? Here we go, for the past 30 days in descending order of popularity:


rape videos
rape video
hunger games trailer
rape scene
rape
irreversible
irreversible rape scene
rape scenes
inside vagina

There's our non-logged-in audience and it's kind of depressing. Google is 45% of our traffic. Fuck them. I'm a little happier about things that go nuts on Facebook for no apparent reason. Log out and look at the facebook comments on this moderately upvoted page. http://videosift.com/video/How-Belly-Dancers-Flip-Coins

So VideoSift is two worlds, the beautiful community where we live and make content and the other VideoSift that actually supports the site and pays the server bills.

There's an adage going around the Internet that if you aren't paying for a product or service ... you are the product or service. See Gmail for a good example of that. You are the product that's being offered to advertisers when you use Gmail. I hope that we have sidestepped that a little bit. It's true, that the content that we all create here does become a product that we offer to advertisers ... at least there is the option of Charter membership and at least we try and keep the ad saturation cordoned off to the non-logged in area.

Anyone else notice that the two world leaders both happen to be left handed? The left handed community is finally getting member into key positions around the world. Your right handed doom is nigh!!

Fixed.

>> ^Nebosuke:

Two worlds I would never have thought would cross... hipsters' daytime television and Snoop Dogg.

Two worlds I would never have thought would cross... retirees' daytime television and Snoop Dogg.

Please do not confuse classical liberalism (now known as libertarianism) with the marxist and communist twaddle known as "modern liberalism", a preventable mental disorder that will be the ruin of Western Civ.

Political correctness is your training program to be a good slave.

YOUR training, not mine, Numbnuts.




>> ^Fade:

Liberalism is western democracy/civilization moron.
Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.[2] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and freedom of religion.[3][4][5][6][7] These ideas are widely accepted, even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century.
Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.
The revolutionaries in the American Revolution and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal ideas spread even further in the twentieth century, when liberal democracies triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges from fascism and communism.
Today, liberalism in its many forms remains as a political force to varying degrees of power and influence on all major continents.>> ^quantumushroom:
The real illness in that Orwellian police state is found in the mental weaklings (proles) who called the cops over hateful, offensive speech. If the roles had been reversed and it was a Black person spouting racist rubbish, there would be no arrest or "bobbies" looking for her. It won't be much longer.

>> ^Skeeve:
While her tirade makes me sick, the fact that she was arrested for this makes me even more sick.
Freedom of speech means nothing if you don't have the freedom to offend people. The aim should be to draw the line where it causes harm - whether by inciting violence or by denying someone a job, etc.

Liberalism is western democracy/civilization moron.

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.[2] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and freedom of religion.[3][4][5][6][7] These ideas are widely accepted, even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century.

Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

The revolutionaries in the American Revolution and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal ideas spread even further in the twentieth century, when liberal democracies triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges from fascism and communism.

Today, liberalism in its many forms remains as a political force to varying degrees of power and influence on all major continents.>> ^quantumushroom:

The real illness in that Orwellian police state is found in the mental weaklings (proles) who called the cops over hateful, offensive speech. If the roles had been reversed and it was a Black person spouting racist rubbish, there would be no arrest or "bobbies" looking for her. It won't be much longer.

>> ^Skeeve:
While her tirade makes me sick, the fact that she was arrested for this makes me even more sick.
Freedom of speech means nothing if you don't have the freedom to offend people. The aim should be to draw the line where it causes harm - whether by inciting violence or by denying someone a job, etc.

Thank you kindly!

In reply to this comment by geo321:
*quality