Congratulations to the Greek left! The movement against austerity....

Original post by Quady

In good news they got a private school guy who's dad was chairman of the largest steel Greek steel producer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halyvourgiki_S.A.

Setting class issues to one side, the basic thing is, he's an academic economist. Would you sooner have a road sweeper doing the job, or an experienced academic economist?

Reply 202

ChaoticButterfly

Original post by Fullofsurprises

Setting class issues to one side, the basic thing is, he's an academic economist. Would you sooner have a road sweeper doing the job, or an experienced academic economist?

To be honest I wouldn't put much in that either. Pseudo science and all that. Basically I'm saying the Greek guy is the 'correct' kind of economist :tongue:

Reply 203

Quady

Original post by Fullofsurprises

Setting class issues to one side, the basic thing is, he's an academic economist. Would you sooner have a road sweeper doing the job, or an experienced academic economist?

If there is one thing I know about economics. Having a economist, let alone an academic economist running the show is not necessarily 'better'.

I'd rather they were sensible and we'll advised.

Re the road sweeper - ever read Dilbert?

Reply 204

Quady

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Ye I agree that your financial background and class do not make you unfit for any job by default. Tonny Benn was an aristocrat for example. But the Greek guy is much more qualified on paper when it comes to economics. Plus the point that it is the case that it is the very rich who are making these austerity policies are becoming better off as a result and the people with much less who are not in the sphere of influence are the ones getting screwed over.

Isn't PPE (where the E is for economics) qualified enough?

Reply 205

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

I'm just gonna post other poeples' pics and memes.

The UK is in the top 5 performing EU countries by any important metric, while Greece is the worst performing by just about any possible metric. I don't really get it. Similarly in your lemmings cartoon, you show Germany at the head of the group running off the cliff, yet Germany is one of the best performing economies in the world, slightly better even than Britain. Netherlands and Finland right behind are also doing fine with low unemployment, growth, and sound finances.

By all means you can say Greece's terrible performance is not the result of SYRIZA - they haven't been in power long enough to tell for sure what their effect will be - but comparing Northern European countries unfavourably to Greece doesn't make any sense at all. Even Ireland is doing far better than them.

Reply 206

ChaoticButterfly

[video="youtube;Afl9WFGJE0M"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afl9WFGJE0M[/video]

Reply 207

Barack Obama

7

God bless our greek comrades, I salute them. We need to wage war against the neoliberal agenda.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 208

Quady

Original post by Barack Obama

God bless our greek comrades, I salute them. We need to wage war against the neoliberal agenda.

That's why your profile is called Barack Obama?

Reply 209

Psych34

1

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31849430

[h="1"]Does Germany owe Greece wartime reparations money?[/h]

Reply 210

MatureStudent36

5

Original post by Psych34

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31849430

[h="1"]Does Germany owe Greece wartime reparations money?[/h]

The Greek government tried this a few years back and we're very firmly told towing their necks in.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/12/does-germany-really-owe-greece-a-etrillion-in-war-reparations-probably-not-no/

Reply 211

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Also if this had been 50 years ago and Greece had been a south american country a Pinochet would be being put in place right about now.

That's because 50 years ago the far left was the major threat to world freedom.

Today it's just a joke.

Reply 212

Midlander

19

Original post by felamaslen

That's because 50 years ago the far left was the major threat to world freedom.

Today it's just a joke.

75 years ago a far right nutter put millions into camps and tried taking over the world. We'll just forget that.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 213

Original post by Midlander

75 years ago a far right nutter put millions into camps and tried taking over the world. We'll just forget that.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Well the successors to him are the Islamists, and the West is currently working on getting rid of that too.

Reply 214

Original post by felamaslen

That's because 50 years ago the far left was the major threat to world freedom.

Today it's just a joke.

Independent Greeks [far right] are in fact in coalition with SYRIZA and Russia has supported both parties.

I tend to Scott Sumners explanation that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the intellectual left's clear defeat has given way to a sort of 'Coalition of the Desperate' between a diverse array of the world's loser countries and movements, that has no coherent intellectual programme at all.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 215

Original post by Observatory

Independent Greeks [far right] are in fact in coalition with SYRIZA and Russia has supported both parties.

I tend to Scott Sumners explanation that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the intellectual left's clear defeat has given way to a sort of 'Coalition of the Desperate' between a diverse array of the world's loser countries and movements, that has no coherent intellectual programme at all.

Well it has always been democracy vs. <insert dead-end totalitarian ideology here>.

Reply 216

Rakas21

21

Original post by Observatory

Independent Greeks [far right] are in fact in coalition with SYRIZA and Russia has supported both parties.

I tend to Scott Sumners explanation that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the intellectual left's clear defeat has given way to a sort of 'Coalition of the Desperate' between a diverse array of the world's loser countries and movements, that has no coherent intellectual programme at all.

The intellectual left's reaction to the collapse of the USSR is quite interesting, anything that is not a narrow libertarian brand of marxism is regarded as not really socialist.

Reply 217

Original post by felamaslen

Well it has always been democracy vs. <insert dead-end totalitarian ideology here>.

ChaoticButterfly is right that the West was happy to ally with lesser-evil dictators, or dictators with ideologies that weren't likely to spread or be dangerous (as you seem to admit), like Pinochet and Franco. It did this for expediency. But now there's no big enemy, so the West doesn't need these people, and all the idiots of every flavour seem to have coalesced onto a side that doesn't have any coherent beliefs, except a sense that the West is an enemy and that if they don't stick together everyone is doomed.

In the old days for instance Putin's Russia would have been an obvious candidate for a right-wing dictatorial ally against the officially communist PRC, but today we have rather better relations with the PRC than we do with Russia, since we believe the PRC is willing to get with the program eventually whereas Russia has overtly refused to budge on a few key issues. (I'm not convinced this analysis is correct, btw, but it is certainly believed in the West.)

In the old days you would have never seen an alliance between communist Cuba and clericalist, anti-Ba'athist Iran. But today we have the hilarious spectacle of Casto writing op-eds condemning the morality of nuclear brinkmanship in an effort to help preserve this key member of the Axis of Losers.

The last remnants of the old Western puppet dictatorship system are places like Saudi and Bahrain and to a lesser extent Pakistan. But as we saw in the Arab Spring, it's a fair weather support at best. If you can preserve yourself, we will pretend that you are our friend, but if your subjects break into your palace and start bayoneting the courtiers of their own accord, we are happy to join in dancing on your grave. And maybe lob a few bombs for good measure.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 218

Original post by Rakas21

The intellectual left's reaction to the collapse of the USSR is quite interesting, anything that is not a narrow libertarian brand of marxism is regarded as not really socialist.

It's the same old airbrush tactics except it doesn't work very well when you don't actually have the power to ban books, censor the internet, or send your critics to concentration camps. In particular the "Marx was an anarchist" *******s seems to be flatly contradicted by his own writings.

I do notice though that all these "libertarian Marxists" seem to end up supporting uniformly statist solutions to any practical problem. There's actually a poster on this board called Anarchism101 who embodies the type completely. Almost everything he posts is in defence of statist socialist policies and parties.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 219