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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
No one expects France to take in an equal amount as everybody is aware that Germany is in a better position to take in refugees, but Britain and France committing to only take in 44k combined over two years is a joke, it's just dodging responsibility. And then having the nerve to go around and blaming the countries doing their part for being "too generous" or whatever is simply just silly.
The economics argument is weird as well as the net benefit of migration is well documented.
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On September 10 2015 04:27 Nyxisto wrote:
No one expects France to take in an equal amount as everybody is aware that Germany is in a better position to take in refugees, but Britain and France committing to only take in 44k combined over two years is a joke, it's just dodging responsibility. And then having the nerve to go around and blaming the countries doing their part for being "too generous" or whatever is simply just silly.
Did I say Germany was too generous ? Is it a joke ? Germany generous ? They've basically been using europe for their advantage day in and day out for the last 10 years, and the simple fact that we receive refugees from germany and not italy or greece - where they come from - still enlight that.
The economics argument is weird as well as the net benefit of migration is well documented.
This is a serious joke. You really believe those people that come, that don't know how to speak french will instantly create a net gain for the society that welcome them... They're a cost and its perfectly normal. They won't create jobs in a society that already has 5 million people unemployed.
And I don't agree with that documentation anyway - there are tons of documents that also points out the supposed net gain of liberalism and those are full of shit.
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WhiteDog I haven't seen any recent reputable development economists arguing that culture is important for development, but anyway this is beside the point. There is no such thing as merit - everything that has ever happened to anyone is the result of the influence of outside forces that were beyond their control and, to them anyway, were random. The ultimate cause is never within the individual. Our circumstances are totally beyond our control, as were the circumstances of our ancestors. That applies to our culture and their culture. Therefore, we're lucky.
As for Samuelson, the guy was predicting the USSR was going to surpass the US in GDP on enough in every one of his textbooks, so I have some doubts over the national accounting in that case. But I agree with you, dictators can generate economic growth - when that growth is geared towards benefiting the elites that support the rulers. This is part of my point.
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On September 10 2015 04:22 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 04:15 Nyxisto wrote:On September 10 2015 03:36 WhiteDog wrote:
) : what is basically happening is that we are taking some refugees off of Merkel's back because she does not want PEDIGA to rise too much. And Germany appears as the herald of humanist values after basically forcing Greece into recession for five consecutive years. Brillantly done.
We're probably going to take in close to a million refugees this year alone, this has to be a joke And what ? They come to your country not mine. Before it was okay for you, because most refugee had to pass through a ton of countries to get to germany (dublin rules - that germany profited from). Now that the situation touch Germany, somehow it is our collective problem and Germany made a deal in order to pass on to their neighbor a part of that influx of migrants. As I said : brilliant. By the way, the situation would be somewhat fair if : - the economic situation in germany and other country was similar (which is not ? we have 3 to 5 million people unemployed) ; - the demographic situation in germany and other country was similar (which it is not ? not only our population is growing while yours is falling, but we have been welcoming migrants at a constant flux for the last three or four decades - 200 000 people a years for 40 years - so much that 20 % of our youth has at least a non-french parent; meanwhile germany just welcome migrants for a few years and then nothing). And the worst in that is that the media paint french as racist and german as beautiful openminded people : some people even talk about a nobel prize for Merkel ! lol.
Merkel with a Nobel prize isnt that crazy considering Obama already has one, that title is a joke today
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WhiteDog I haven't seen any recent reputable development economists arguing that culture is important for development, but anyway this is beside the point. There is no such thing as merit - everything that has ever happened to anyone is the result of the influence of outside forces that were beyond their control and, to them anyway, were random. The ultimate cause is never within the individual. Our circumstances are totally beyond our control, as were the circumstances of our ancestors. That applies to our culture and their culture. Therefore, we're lucky.
The word culture is too complicated for economists so I agree with you. Yet, if you actually look at recent work on development, they all point out at the importance of the state. And when you look at all the work on the development of the state, on the form the state take, what does it basically points out ?
I'm not talking about merit, and I'm not an individualist. But there are cultural circumstances, structures, that define what is and what will be.
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On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : /
China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party.
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On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party.
I really doubt those two countries are comparable in very many metrics. I mean Taiwan got lots of US aid and doesn't have hundreds of millions of people effectively living as medieval farmers.
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On September 10 2015 04:32 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 04:27 Nyxisto wrote:
No one expects France to take in an equal amount as everybody is aware that Germany is in a better position to take in refugees, but Britain and France committing to only take in 44k combined over two years is a joke, it's just dodging responsibility. And then having the nerve to go around and blaming the countries doing their part for being "too generous" or whatever is simply just silly. Did I say Germany was too generous ? Is it a joke ? Germany generous ? They've basically been using europe for their advantage day in and day out for the last 10 years, and the simple fact that we receive refugees from germany and not italy or greece - where they come from - still enlight that. Show nested quote +The economics argument is weird as well as the net benefit of migration is well documented. This is a serious joke. You really believe those people that come, that don't know how to speak french will instantly create a net gain for the society that welcome them... They're a cost and its perfectly normal. They won't create jobs in a society that already has 5 million people unemployed. And I don't agree with that documentation anyway - there are tons of documents that also points out the supposed net gain of liberalism and those are full of shit.
I didn't say anything about instantly. Obviously you will have problems of integration along the way but mid and long term Europe has integrated way more people successfully (UK and France from their colonial past, Germany millions of foreign labourers) at times that were much troublesome than anything we have now. When the Berlin fall hundreds of thousands if not millions fled from the East to West in weeks, so many that many people took in refugees at their private homes. It would really be a shame if we'd not manage to integrate people now given the fact that we're much wealthier than we were in the post-war years.
Regarding the economics of it, many countries that are based on open labour markets are doing very well. Canada, Australia, Sweden and so on, while tight labour markets with little immigration if anything are a symptom that something in the economy is going very wrong. Countries like Greece, Portugal and so on have huge unemployment and at the same time a shrinking labour force. The scarcity of labour is not benefiting those who stay, it's simply an indicator that the outlook is very bleak.
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Could anyone of you list some historical examples when big immigration waves had negative effects on the country? Considering how concerned the masses are I am sure they must exist but all the immigration waves that I can think of right now seemed to have had extremely positive effects often leading to a golden age in the country.
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On September 10 2015 05:20 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
Could anyone of you list some historical examples when big immigration waves had negative effects on the country? Considering how concerned the masses are I am sure they must exist but all the immigration waves that I can think of right now seemed to have had extremely positive effects often leading to a golden age in the country.
The German reunification, for example.
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On September 10 2015 05:03 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party. I really doubt those two countries are comparable in very many metrics. I mean Taiwan got lots of US aid and doesn't have hundreds of millions of people effectively living as medieval farmers.
Taiwan did already have a more developed economy than China in 1945, but nowhere near the difference there is now. Taiwan is today practically 4 times wealthier than China per capita.
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Weeks after toppling Alexis Tsipras's government, Greek far-left leader Panagiotis Lafazanis is landing fresh blows against his former comrade: stealing away voters and usurping the mantle of Greece's foremost anti-bailout champion.
A bearded, bespectacled former Communist whose fiery rhetoric belies his avuncular looks, Lafazanis has long been a headache for Tsipras. He regularly defied his former boss as energy minister and then led a rebellion in his Syriza party, forcing Tsipras to call snap elections on Sept. 20.
Now Lafazanis's barely three-week-old "Popular Unity" party of far-left rebels who broke away from Syriza has emerged as the wild card in the election, wooing former Syriza voters by reminding them that Tsipras capitulated to foreign creditors and accepted a bailout package he promised never to sign up to.
Hitting the campaign trail with pledges to end austerity for good, restore wages and pensions to pre-crisis levels and cancel the 86-billion-euro bailout, 63-year-old Lafazanis sounds a lot like Tsipras did before storming to power in January.
He's not a man to mince words: European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders are "imperialists", the privatisation agency is "sinful", the bailout "neocolonial submission" and Greece is now a "Euro-Atlantic plot".
"They are destroying Greece and unfortunately every new bailout only aggravates this destruction," Lafazanis told Reuters. "Just stop this disaster now - stop blackmailing and putting pressure on Greece to implement bailouts of austerity and a selloff of the country. This a clear dead end not only for Greece but for Europe as a whole."
Unlike Tsipras, however, Lafazanis says he's ready to take Greece out of the euro and back to a national currency - marking him out as far too radical in the eyes of many Greeks.
But polls show the loss of Syriza's far-left flank is costing Tsipras dearly, both in terms of votes and the party's identity as a group that cherishes leftist ideals over power.
Between disillusionment over Tsipras's abrupt bailout U-turn and the lure of Lafazanis, Syriza is now locked in a dead heat with the conservatives in opinion polls - a far cry from the easy victory it was eyeing. Polls show it with 23-29 percent of the vote, well below the level needed for an outright win.
TAKING AWAY CORE VOTERS
Popular Unity, meanwhile, is expected to take 3.5-5 percent of the vote and enter parliament, even though the fledgling party is just 20 days old, cobbled together in a day after Tsipras abruptly announced he was calling snap elections.
"Any loss is a problem (for Syriza) at this stage," ALCO polling agency chief Costas Panagopoulos said.
"For Syriza, Popular Unity's presence creates a problem not only in terms of numbers - its arguments remind voters of Syriza's past commitments and this intensifies the problem."
Popular Unity has stolen about 8 percent of Greeks who voted for Syriza in January when elections were last held, he said. That share may be small but represents Syriza's core leftist base that supported the party through the years, he said.
"It targets the core of the voters who believe that the bailout is a disaster and who have no problem with the adoption of a national currency," Panagopoulous said.
Still, openly calling for a return to the drachma puts the party against the path preferred by most Greeks - polls consistently show a majority favour staying in the euro.
Costas Lapavitsas, an economics professor and former Syriza lawmaker who rebelled and joined Popular Unity, dismisses such polls as "worthless" and says Greeks have never been clearly asked in a referendum if they want to stay in the euro or not.
He points out 62 percent of Greeks voted against the bailout in a July 5 referendum even though the opposition made it clear a 'No' vote was tantamount to leaving the euro.
"Ask them the real question: do you want the euro with the bailout conditions because that's what the euro goes with or do you want an alternative strategy, an anti-bailout strategy, with your own national currency?" he told Reuters.
He argues the anti-bailout sentiment remains strong in Greece, and that Greeks are increasingly asking him how a transition to a new currency would work.
The party is trying to openly tackle the issue head on. Its first TV advertisement takes tongue-in-cheek aim at reports over the summer that Lafazanis hatched a plot to seize the national mint, take over its reserves and force it to print the national currency.
The campaign spot shows Lafazanis hailing a cab and asking to be taken to the national mint, prompting a double take from the driver. Lafazanis smiles knowingly and then sombrely urges Greeks to find out the party's plans for themselves rather than believe the claims of rivals.
The party has not outlined how a transition to the drachma would take place, but Lafazanis has said that it could be as easy as "drinking a glass of water".
Lapavitsas, the professor, acknowledges that Popular Unity has a long road ahead and its work cut out to win public trust.
"People are very hesitant, they don't want the bailout but they trusted Syriza not so long ago and Syriza sold them down the river," he says. "And when that happens once, you don't trust someone else immediately, especially if that someone else was formed just a few weeks ago. Whether we manage to express the anti-bailout feeling very much depends on us."
uk.reuters.com
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On September 10 2015 05:43 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 05:03 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party. I really doubt those two countries are comparable in very many metrics. I mean Taiwan got lots of US aid and doesn't have hundreds of millions of people effectively living as medieval farmers. Taiwan did already have a more developed economy than China in 1945, but nowhere near the difference there is now. Taiwan is today practically 4 times wealthier than China per capita.
It's much easier to get 20 million people to a higher level of wealth than over 1 billion. I mean those two countries are so far removed from each other in many important factors it's not even funny anymore.
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On September 10 2015 05:23 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 05:20 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
Could anyone of you list some historical examples when big immigration waves had negative effects on the country? Considering how concerned the masses are I am sure they must exist but all the immigration waves that I can think of right now seemed to have had extremely positive effects often leading to a golden age in the country. The German reunification, for example.
The german reunification had good effect, it just took time...
No, let's talk about immigration objectively : France recent immigration from Maghreb and Africa is not a walk in the park. It is still unfinished (two to three generations after the first migrants) and had very bad effect on the social question in France. Just to clearly explain where I stand, I teach and live in the "93", the dreaded department that saw a huge influx of migrants for decades (and its also one of the poorest after the north) - the city I teach in (Montreuil) was rumored to be the second biggest Malian city after Bamako (altho it's more of a joke than anything else). To clarify, the kids I teach to are bright human being but they clearly do not feel french.
To permit a good integration of migrants you need many things. The problem is that Nyxisto's vision, much like the elite, is putting aside the politics and the social aspect of immigration and only points at the economic value created by migrants. Due to that vision, any critics towards migration is instantly labelled as racist (but when the FN was at 5% it was racism, now that it is a 20 % is it still racism ?). Sure, men create value when they work, and migrants do work, so yes they are good from an economical standpoint - at least for GDP. It's like discovering hot water.
Yet, migration has heterogeneous effects on wage - an influx of uneducated workers usually increase competition in the labor market and thus reduce wage or prevent any increase in wage. There is a reason why its mostly firms that ask for immigration - they need workers and are not ready to increase wage (and there are a tons of historical exemple of that kind of economic migration in the US, France or UK).
From a political and a social standpoint, migration is a much more complex matter. Looking at France past 50 to 30 years, immigration without any clear policies (policies that needs money) create tons of problems of integration. You need to prevent spatial segregation, and thus you need to prevent migrants from concentrating theirselves in a few areas (something France completly failed to do). You also need investment in education to permit part of those migrants to find work (when there is work in the country) and to rise in the social ladder in order to dilute the racial question (something that is only partly done in France). More than anything you need time. The elites deny that because - and this is something I really stress on - they use tons of strategies to protect theirselves against migrants : through their housing choices, through their choice of school, through their marital choices.
Regarding the economics of it, many countries that are based on open labour markets are doing very well. Canada, Australia, Sweden and so on, while tight labour markets with little immigration if anything are a symptom that something in the economy is going very wrong. Countries like Greece, Portugal and so on have huge unemployment and at the same time a shrinking labour force. The scarcity of labour is not benefiting those who stay, it's simply an indicator that the outlook is very bleak.
Greece and Portugal have a shrinking labour force because they don't have open markets ?
And Australia, Canada and Sweden are doing fine due to their open labour markets ? Can we be serious and at least agree that the effect of immigration and the integration of migrants heavily depend on the economic circumstances ?
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On September 10 2015 03:36 WhiteDog wrote:
There are tons of exemple of dictatorship that had better economic performance - from Hitler to Stalin (yes the USSR had a huge growth, just read book from Samuelson during the cold war and see what he thinks about it). The reason is that those people use every mean necessary - destroying natural ressources, stealing wealth from others and even using the blood of their people in order to "grow" an indicator that is supposed to measure the "wealth" produced - but that does not, thankfully, measure the wealth destroyed.
Again, stability is relative. Compared to anarchy and civil war, a dictatorship is great. But they are not as stable as democratic institutions, which change slowly. However, democratic institutions do not so easily develop, as you need widespread acceptance of the rule of law and of property rights before a democratic system will actually work. It is by nature inefficient, and valued more for its ability to consistently move forward at a gradual pace in an already well-developed society (even if it isn't as wealthy as you would like). The land-owning class plays a role in this because establishing a nobility with wealth will encourage them to act in favor of stability, in general. That's a better starting point to transition to a democracy than, say, Syria in the middle of its current civil war.
Russia and Germany in the years of Stalin and Hitler, respectively, were well beyond the point in which dictatorships add stability, and would have been better with a transition to more democratic means. Trouble regions in the world, not so much.
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I'd say the positive effects came from your oh so hated Agenda 2010 and a socialist government being reasonable, not German reunification. 
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On September 10 2015 06:08 dismiss wrote:I'd say the positive effects came from your oh so hated Agenda 2010 and a socialist government being reasonable, not German reunification.
It's still a horrible example because Germany also gained 40% additional territory that needed to be developed.
If you look at the other big german immigration wave of the post WW2 german refugees from eastern Europe it was followed by the economic miracle.
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Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive.
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On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive.
The agenda 2010 did peanuts by itself... with the euro yeah. They successfully abused the european institutions. Congratz.
Not that they're the only one, everybody tried to do the same in their own way, and our leader Jean-Claude Juncker is the best exemple of that.
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On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive.
That might be true, still Germany managed to have the Wirtschaftswunder even after accepting 12 million refugees, but now people fear that a couple hundred thousands per year will break our economic back.
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EPT
