Greece's Syriza Could Launch A Libertarian Revolution

If I were to start throwing around solutions for the situation in Greece, they would include:

1) A debt restructuring. Greeces government cant pay the present debt load of over 175% of GDP, so it wont, and shouldnt.

2) A major tax reform. Greeces 45% payroll tax rate, plus its 23% VAT rate, plus a personal income tax system with a top rate of 46% (and the 32% rate hitting at only 26,000 euros of income), makes business activity basically impossible unless you evade the taxes. So, thats what people do, if they want to somehow obtain food and shelter. Others rely on government handouts welfare recipients, government employees, and crony businesses concluding (correctly) that regular economic activity is pointless in this environment.

If all this wasnt disastrous enough, capital gains are taxed as regular income. The new government is also planning a Large Property Tax, or basically a wealth tax. Plus, Im sure there are hundreds of junk taxes on all sorts of nonsense, which always happens in these situations.

3) A major overhaul of government services, aiming to provide the same level of service with much lower cost to the government. This would likely include a major reduction of government employee headcount, probably a restructuring of employment agreements, and eliminating myriad crony deals with government suppliers.

4) Either keeping the euro, or introducing other stable money alternatives such as an open currency policy where people can use any currency they wish.

While I am sure some will accuse me of airy-fairy libertarian fantasizing, I actually think the present Syriza government yes, the communists are pretty close to this strategy already. Lets see what I mean.

1) The Syriza partys main policy platform was basically to break out of the austerity framework imposed by outsiders, and proceed with a debt restructuring.

See the rest here:

Greece's Syriza Could Launch A Libertarian Revolution

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