In the current situation, "structural reforms" is used to subsume two entirely different sets of measures.

The first is meant to remove what you previously mentioned: corruption in all the shapes and forms it takes in Greece, from a (intentionally) broken tax system formed over decades of nepotism to a bankrupt national media in the hands of oligarchs. The institutions of the Greek state are precisely what you expect when a country has been run by four families (Papandreou, Samaras, Mitsotakis, Karamanlis) for basically five decades.

This kind of structural reform is part of Syriza's program. Like you said, it'll be hard work and they might very well fail. They'll have only weeks, maybe a few months to undo significant parts of what has grown over half a century. It's not fair, but that's what it is.

The second kind of "structural reform" is meant to increase competitiveness, generally speaking, and a reduction of the public sector. In case of Greece, this included the slashing of wages, pensions, benefits, public employment. The economic and social results are part of just about every article these days, so I won't mention them again. A Great Depression, as predicted.

That's the sort of "structural reforms" Syriza wants to undo. And it's the sort that is expected of Spain, Italy and France as well, which, if done, would probably throw the entire continent into a Great Depression.

I'd go so far as to call any demand to increase competitiveness to German levels madness. Germany gained its competitiveness by 15 years of beggar-thy-neighbour economics, undercutting the agreed upon target of ~2% inflation (read: 2% growth of unit labour costs) the entire time. France played by the rules, was on target the entire time, and is now expected to suffer for it. Only Greece was significantly above target, and are now slightly below target. That's only halfway, yet already more than any democratic country can take.

They could have spread the adjustment out over 20 years, with Germany running above average ULC growth, but decided to throw Greece (and to a lesser degree Spain) off a cliff instead.


So where are we now? Debt rose, GDP crashed, debt as percentage of GDP skyrocketed. That's a fail. Social situation is miserable, health care system basically collapsed, reducing Greece to North African standards. That's a fail.

Those are not reforms to allow Greece to function independently. Those are reforms to throw the Greek population into misery, with ever increasing likeliness of radical solutions (eg Golden Dawn, who are eagerly hoping for a failure of Syriza).

So yes, almost every nation in Europe needs reforms of one sort or another. But using austerity as a rod to beat discipline into supposedly sovereign nations is just about the shortest way imaginable to blow up the Eurozone. Inflicting this amount of pain on people against their will does not work in democratic countries, and the rise of Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP and the Greens as well as the surge of popularity for Front National and Golden Dawn are clear indicators that the current form of politics cannot be sustained.

Force austerity on France and Le Pen wins the election.

Meaningful reforms that are to increase Europe's "prosperity" would have the support of the people. And reforms are definatly needed, given that the Eurozone is in its fifth year of stagnation, with many countries suffering from both a recession and deflation. A European Union without increasing prosperity for the masses will not last long, I'm sure of it. And a European Union that intentionally causes Great Depressions wouldn't be worth having anyway.

Yet after everything is said and done, I believe you are still absolutely correct in saying that the pro-austerity states won't blink.

Which is what makes it interesting, really. Greece might be able to take a default. They run a primary surplus and most (90%+) of the funds went to foreign banks, the ECB and the IMF anyway, or were used to stabilize the banking system. The people got bugger all. But the Greek banking system would collapse without access to the European system.

Which raises the question: would the pro-austerity states risk a collapse of the Greek banking system and everything it entails? Spanish banks would follow in a heartbeat.

As for the morality of it (they elected those governments, they deserved it): I don't believe in collective punishment, especially not the kind that cripples an entire generation, which is what years of 50+% youth unemployment and a failing educational system does.

My own country, Germany, in particular gets no sympathy from me in this case. Parts of our system were intentionally reformed to channel funds into the market, knowing full well that there was nowhere near enough demand for credit to soak up the surplus savings, nowhere near enough reliable debtors to generate a reasonable return of investment without generating bubbles, be it real estate or financial. They were looking for debtors, and if all it took was turning a blind eye to the painfully obvious longterm problems it would create in Southern Europe, they were more than eager to play along.

So many holes in your argument.

You're cherry picking the parts of Nazism to fit your anti-religious views. You even made the argument that Russia was dogmatically atheist, which isn't a true characterization of Russia then, either.

The simple fact of the matter is racial supremacy had what was seen as extremely scientific underpinnings with a foundation of Darwin, which then was applied to Social Darwinism, etc.

You had Nazi scientists who were going around the world literally measuring people's skulls, with the assumption that Germans had bigger brain pans, and that must explain why they're the master race.

Those ideas sure as hell weren't religious.

The simple fact of the matter is that there were secular and religious arguments against Nazism, as there also were secular and religious arguments in favor of it at the time.

It's very difficult to argue that the evil of Nazi Germany rose due to the level of dogmatic behavior within Germany. Prior to Hitler's rise, Germany was considered a Western European modernized, industrialized country, and for the time well educated, as was France and Britain. It was far more like Britain and France than it was to Russia.

An even better counterargument - who was the most modernized, secular, educated people in Southeast Asia, and therefore should have been the least likely to instigate war according to your logic? Japan, yet they became an imperial, aggressive power.

The rise of Nazi Germany is something I studied quite a bit of, and boiling it down to how dogmatic the people were is not only overly simplistic, it's not remotely historically accurate. It completely factors out the god awful mistake the Treaty of Versailles from WWI was, the common particular disdain for Jews at the time (some due to religious conflict, for Nazis it was more about race), the dependency of Germany on US loans, which dried up when the Great Depression began, the scientific trends in thought at the time, etc.

Those all converged.

And the reality is that "Muslim" countries are more likely to subject women to numerous horrors simply because more Muslim countries have not modernized their economies yet. Hey, just like every other religion. The reason we treat women well is we've had an industrialized economy far longer, and even then, the speed of it was often circumstantial. Women's rights in the US took a quantum leap forward because of women being needed for labor in WWII (same reason the Civil Rights Movement started so relatively soon after WWII as well).

I dunno, he called the Great Depression for what it was:
"Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."-If anyone's a putz it's Moore and his whiny, self-supporting micro vs. macro schtick.

Bowling For Columbine in a nutshell: No guns, no more problems. Horseshit.

Yes, of course, judge an entire generation by the babblings of a C-list reality star-tard. After all, the history books are littered with similar examples:

Pretty sure it was all those uneducated, worthless orphans and factory rats that caused World War 1

And don't forget how absynthe, ganja, and the Charleston caused the Great Depression.

Then there was that greatest generation of war-hungry, shell shocked GIs that could barely even put people on the moon.

Only to be followed by hippies and disco queens that gave us Reagan and Thatcher (think my faux-nalogy is falling apart here...)

Thing is many people think they are annonymous when acting like a spoiled teenager. They aren't.

I do agree with Bill Maher however, there are more poor in this nation than at any other time besides the great depression, and while most poor used to think themselves middle class, now it is the opposite. It has created a lot of rage in a lot of people.

Best 'New Rules' in some time.

Let's look at what happened the last few times society was brought crashing down in the US. Well there was that whole slavery thing, I mean rap is terrible now but on the whole, net gain we've got our dream teams.

1920 women get the right to VOTE! Sadly it caused the great depression and they keep voting for stupid men in the senate so I'd say that's a loss, sorry chicks.

1960s Huge upheaval of culture, suddenly there's all these women and minorities in colleges instead of just white people. Led to the feminist movement the environmental movement and other causes. Also we don't invade countries and destroy them nearly as bad as we used to after that. Ultimately a Civilizing effect that it had on the entire society, good deal.

Hey two out of three if I'm counting correctly, looks like we're about due. These movements don't come just themselves other things happen around them and with their changes such as Occupy. So we could have some real changes coming up. I say women better get to it because I'm a white man and I'm sure not gonna help them eliminate my birthright of domination.

If I am ever homeless and some dude hands me an A&F article of clothing, I'm selling that sucker to the first person who will buy it.

If he wanted to troll A&F and really help homeless people, he should have paid them to carry anti-A&F slogan signs for a day. It certainly would have done more than his money supporting Goodwill, who is worse than A&F any day of the week.

Seriously, Goodwill exploits a Great Depression minimum wage loophole for disabled people. They pay these people in the neighborhood of 1.40 an hour and yet executives can take home high 6 figure to low 7 figure salaries, not to mention special travel and other compensation benefits.

Here's what wiki has to say about Ford and his high wages -- that he called profit sharing for qualified workers. Started in 1914. By the Great Depression, no more profits, I guess, and therefore no more high wages:

Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.[20]

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.[21] A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression."[22] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.[23][24] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[25] while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[26] (Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later it was changed to a day off.)

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[27] Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the policy as profit-sharing rather than wages.[28] It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5 day.[29]

The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and what might today be called "deadbeat dads". The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."[30]

Pluto was discovered in 1930... then the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII happened... makes you wonder doesn't it!

>> ^MayaBaba:

Good added facts there RFlagg.
You know since Pluto was declassified as a planet the worlds gone to hell in a hand basket - makes you wonder doesn't it!

Well said. I couldn't have added anything better.

>> ^NetRunner:

The purpose of the question wasn't an invitation for people to deliver a wish list, but instead a rhetorical questioning of what more he'd have to do in order to get certain people to say he's doing a good job as President.
On that score, bobknight didn't say "more" jobs, he just said jobs three times, as if Obama has delivered none, which is obviously wrong. As for less debt, I find this request amusing. Bush inherited a huge surplus and a booming economy from Clinton, and turned it into trillion dollar deficits and the worst economic expansion since WW2. Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and has already reversed the trend (deficit is shrinking, and employment is increasing).
So what more do people want before they admit he's doing a good job? The answer given, as always, is "fix all the messes created by Republicans in one term despite lockstep opposition from Republicans."
The real answer, however, is nothing.
>> ^BoneRemake:
Bob did not say anything about his track record, Bob was stating what he wants.
More jobs and less debt. you two would be stupid not to want the same thing.

The purpose of the question wasn't an invitation for people to deliver a wish list, but instead a rhetorical questioning of what more he'd have to do in order to get certain people to say he's doing a good job as President.

On that score, bobknight didn't say "more" jobs, he just said jobs three times, as if Obama has delivered none, which is obviously wrong. As for less debt, I find this request amusing. Bush inherited a huge surplus and a booming economy from Clinton, and turned it into trillion dollar deficits and the worst economic expansion since WW2. Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and has already reversed the trend (deficit is shrinking, and employment is increasing).

So what more do people want before they admit he's doing a good job? The answer given, as always, is "fix all the messes created by Republicans in one term despite lockstep opposition from Republicans."

The real answer, however, is nothing.

>> ^BoneRemake:

Bob did not say anything about his track record, Bob was stating what he wants.
More jobs and less debt. you two would be stupid not to want the same thing.

First off, Romney does not equal Obama. This kind of thinking is truly what frightens me, and it's not because of the reasons you probably think.

Some 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of the population were ignorant of politics and apathetic. Political games were played, cheap shots were utilized, but in the end, in the big scheme of things, on the truly big issues, both sides would compromise and do the right thing. Clinton and the GOP Congress balancing the budget, Bush Sr. raising taxes, etc. etc. Stuff got done. And the majority of people were wholly ignorant on things like federal budgets, that kind of thing. There was also some kind of understanding on basic principles where regardless of your ideology, you couldn't do catastrophic things just because it suited your ideology.

Now, that's gone. Extremists in both parties are labelled fascists or communists, or whatever, but now moderates are being labelled as either part of the same extremist groups, or they're called sell-outs, part of a completely corrupt system, and perpetrators of that system, not as agents trying to work within a system that was built long before they got there, who could change the system while they work within it. When they do the right thing that violates ideology, it's not because it was the bipartisan right thing to do; it's because they're extensions of the corrupt system. The bailouts are an absolutely perfect example. I hate to break it to people here, and I know most won't agree with me, but the bailouts were the right thing to do, even if you're against too big to fail, etc. The banking system was already in place when the economy collapsed. It's like being in a boat as its sinking. You can critique the design of the boat all you want, but the boat sinking kills you all. It's ridiculous to talk about actions that will blow up the boat. Plug the holes, do what you need to do to get the boat to land. THEN figure out how to fix the design, or build a new boat. But what happened? The bipartisan policy by both a Democrat and Republican president was tarred and feathered as government being in the pocket of big business. Those same people don't seem to realize the boat didn't sink. We didn't face another depression. Be critical the banking system wasn't significantly reformed after that was done, I have no issues with that.

To the person who said Obama's policies haven't worked in three years? Again, are we in a depression? No. Those policies worked. And how can you expect a macro-economic shift within a year or two of his other policies? Go back and look at economic history. Things don't change on a dime just from macro-economic policies instituted by the government. It takes several years before the effect can be measured. Again, sheer ignorance. The difference today is the ignorant are far more willing to participate in the political debate even though they don't have a clue what they're talking about. This is a problem on both sides.

Both sides are stoking the ignorant to get involved in the public debates, and not encouraging a very very basic understanding of crucial facts about history. Like... WWII was a Keynesian economic exercise effectively, which in the end was a gigantic gov't deficit that did end the Great Depression. This is a very straight forward basic economical historical fact. But there's 30% of the population that will not believe it because it blows apart what they politically favor today. It's ridiculous.

I disagree with Romney, and I probably won't vote for him. But he's not a fascist. There's a significant difference between him and Santorum. And there's a significant difference between him and Obama. Is there a choice as clearly different as say Ron Paul vs. Ralph Nader? No. Is that a bad thing? Not in my book.

My fear is in our political ecosystem, the moderates, the good ones who truly aren't compromising for the wrong reasons, but do it to get things done, and have a willingness to ignore ideology for practical solutions that help the country are getting drowned out, and characterized as corrupt when they're not. I disagree with Romney, but he's not corrupt. I disagree with Obama, but he's not corrupt. We don't need a revolution to fix our current political system, but an increasing number of people think we do. And the last decade we're seeing a rise in the extremists on both sides enough to drown out the political moderates we desperately need. This just can't continue indefinitely.

>> ^deathcow:

>> ^lantern53:
Obama's policies have not worked for the past 3 years. If you believe some improvement is coming, you have far more faith than the average Catholic bishop.

obama = romney = anyone else they put forward

If we're measuring the success of the bailouts by who got income gains, we're missing the big picture. The point of the bailouts wasn't to redistribute wealth. It wasn't to fix the economy long term. The point of the bailouts was to stop the bleeding, and fix a short term crisis.

I'm disappointed Obama hasn't done more to fix the economy long term. Yes, some wealth redistribution is necessary for the health of the economy. Criticize him for that, I have no problem with it.

Criticizing the bailouts via statistics of income gains broken down by economic class is ridiculous. It's like criticizing using water to put a house fire out because it didn't fix the termite problem. The bailouts were fantastically successful because we're sitting here looking at a excruciatingly slow recovering economy instead of staring at a second Great Depression with no end in sight.

Why no Ireland or Iceland in here?

The last graph that really bothered me was the one showing that right now the UK is on track to have a longer, deeper recession now than they had in the Great Depression.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot." --Henry Morgenthau, Jr., U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

The myth of FDR is the edifice on which the modern welfare state wobbles.




>> ^Yogi:

>> ^quantumushroom:
So what did FDR do, exactly? If big biz (that old reliable satan of the left) really "controlled" government then all FDR did was make government bigger and more tyrannical, and to this day the left claims big biz still runs it.
FDR's antics extended the Depression. "High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare."
Obama's cut from the same fictive cloth, a dragon pretending to be dragonslayer.

These statements are from a reputable historian or economist I take it?