Hat tip to Daniel for sending this along, from Spiegelonline:
The people who could ultimately give Greece the coup de grace are not the kind to throw stones or Molotov cocktails, and they have yet to torch any cars. Instead, they are people like 60-year-old beverage distributor Angelos Belitsakos, people who might soon turn into a real problem for the economically unstable country. Feeling cornered, he and other private business owners want to go on the offensive. But instead fighting with weapons, they are using something much more dangerous. They are fighting with money.
Belitsakos is a short, slim and alert man who lives in the middle-class Athenian suburb of Holargos. He is also the physical and spiritual leader of a movement of businesspeople in Greece that is recruiting new members with growing speed. While Greece’s government is desperately trying to combat its ballooning budget deficit by raising taxes and imposing new fees, people like Belitsakos are putting their faith in passive resistance.
The group’s slogan is as simple as it is stoic: “We Won’t Pay.”
This business owners’ absolute refusal to pay any taxes resembles an uprising of the ownership class, rather than the working class, a rebellion of the self-employed business owners who have long been the backbone of Greek society. These are not the people who weaseled their way into Greece’s oversized civil service; these are people who put their money in the private sector, working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Or so Belitsakos says.
Standing in his small store, Belitsakos makes a sweeping gesture and says that the people in his movement no longer have a choice. “The state will kill us,” he says. “We’re acting in self-defense.” Then he starts to do the math. Over the last two years, his sales have massively shrunk as 60 of the tavernas and restaurants he used to make deliveries to have terminated their contracts with him. At the same time, the government has raised the value-added tax (VAT) twice while imposing a never-ending series of new fees. He mentions the €300 ($406) one-time fee for the self-employed, a two-percentage-point boost in the VAT, a €180 solidarity levy for the unemployed and a property tax that is “easily a few hundred euros every year.”
The taxes are part of Athens’ last ditch effort to avoid drifting into insolvency and to live up to the promises of austerity it delivered to the European Union. The country’s vast debt means it is already reliant on the steady drip of aid it receives from a €110 billion rescue package passed last year, with a second such package likely to be passed this fall. But each payment from the fund is dependent on progress being made on the effort to clean up the country’s finances.
That progress has been halting at best. In an effort to move the process forward, the government of Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou has recently announced it intends to cut thousands of more civil servant jobs. And it introduced a controversial one-off property tax which has angered many. Several other taxes and fees have also been introduced.
Belitsakos calls them “charatzi,” a word from Ottoman times that can perhaps best be translated as “loot” or “compulsory levy.” The term is meant to indicate taxes levied arbitrarily and without justification, such as the tithe once paid to feudal lords. “But I can’t and won’t pony up. It’s wrong,” Belitsakos says. “Don’t you understand?”
The situation finally drove Belitsakos to write a letter to the head of the local tax authority in the name of his group. “We see ourselves facing a whole series of new taxes,” he wrote. “We are protesting and enraged.” He went on to charge that the only purpose behind the new fees was the “dispossession and impoverishment” of the Greeks and that he was now forced to resist. Briefly put, he wrote: “We won’t pay.”
Belitsakos says the tax official he handed the letter to was understanding and friendly. The fact that the civil servant put on a brave face might have something to do with all the TV cameras that were present. But, in a place like Greece, it is also entirely possible that the official was simply not all that surprised that someone would announce they were evading their taxes.
As well-known analyst Babis Papadimitriou puts it, the average Greek may well love his country, but he views the state apparatus as a power that one can and should plunder. Papadimitriou says that while the European average for VAT taxes that are evaded is 10 percent, the rate in Greece is roughly 30 percent. About a third of the entire economy happens off tax-authority radars.
These days, even communists, unionists and leftists are raising a public outcry against the new taxes. This week, Aleka Papariga, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, said that the only way to stop the complete bankrupting of the people was for them to not pay the “charatzi.” In fact, financial resistance had now become the supreme civic duty, she said.
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Greek Economy Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said: “The question is how we can create a feeling of solidarity. One for all and all for one, that’s what it’s about now.” Still, Chrysochoidis would not answer his own question. For the moment, he said, it doesn’t look like the government can count on many of their fellow Greeks being willing to sacrifice themselves for the interest of the state. In fact, people are abandoning the government in droves.
Belitsakos, the beverage distributor, can’t and won’t play a role in rescuing his country no matter what. The reason has nothing to do with patriotism. Instead, it has to do with his mistrust of the government in Athens and “international financial capitalism” and the fact that, despite having once studied mathematics, he still can’t fathom the amount of money at stake here.
Belitsakos stresses that his plan is to refuse to pay any and all taxes and fees. If he has to, he says he will either go broke, to jail or both. He is convinced that there are thousands upon thousands who think just like he does and that, in the end, the Greeks will win this battle that they never chose.
The only question is what they really have to win.
A joke going around economic circles: The trick is how to get Germans to work until they are 70 so that the greeks can retire at 55.
The Germans are using banks, not tanks this time.
To the first poster — swm.
This has nothing to do about Greeks retiring at 55.
To the 2nd poster –Otto Maddox.
The German people are also innocent.
It has everything to do with Central Banks creating Money as Debt.
Time to awaken to the real issues about why people across the the entire globe are being crushed unde DEBT;
Don’t take my word for it — look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB5M5nuTD9w&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL9EE5F40D23D927B7
Pass this on — time to awaken to the Central Bankster Scam..!
Cut them loose from the euro and let them sink or swim. And yes, we are going in the same direction.
How much of our economy is “off the books”? We have one heck of a lot of immigrants, legal and illegal, from countries where tax evasion is the accepted norm. Add the mounting tax and regulatory pressure on the small business person and the general belief that most of the tax collections are wasted, and you have a lot of people that will justify not paying taxes.
We also have our own government handout-dependent underclass. Paying for them and the bureaucracy to supervise the payment system is bankrupting the middle class. This country is richer than Greece, so we can pay for these folks longer. But not forever, as we are can no longer compete as effectively in the world economy and our national “wealth” is so mismanaged.
Another Investor,
You forgot the biggest welfare queens of all — the banks. The Federal Reserve gave $16 trillion of our money to the criminal bankster class:
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
I fail to see how the white-collar criminal at Government Sachs (where the average salary is $700,000 per year) need this massive amount of welfare. And yet, people like you focus on the tiny amounts of government money going to those at the bottom of the pyramid while its the bankster criminals at the top who are doing the most damage.
Oh boy, here we go.
According to this, half of Americans don’t pay income tax, and are ungrateful to those of us that do:
http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2011/afterburner-with-bill-whittle-rich-man-poor-man/
It seems that the gap between the Haves and Havenots is not only growing, but also getting more contentious.
Look we are all on the same team. We all want to be left alone and free to live our own lives free of govt/FEDs/corps/agents picking our pockets, listening in on our phones, digging through our trash, reading our emails etc etc.
It’s us against “them”. You can define and label “them” however you like. But at the end of the day their strategy has always been to create infighting between us- the people.
Lets focus on the things we all treasure- “liberty” is a good general term that has seemed to encompass many of these things thru history.
I guess my point is during these types of conversations it is alwasy good to remember the big picture…to me that is the “us vs them” concept.
This discussion is about JtR’s question, “Is the USA Next”, not about the politics of bank bailouts or the supposed mysteries of the Fed and fractional reserve banking.
If you don’t think we have a permanent underclass, take a look at this lady. Her son will be the fourth generation in this subsidized housing project. She last held a full time job with the state in 2004 and has only been off food stamps for one year in her entire life.
The title is Raising a Family on $600 a Month”, but that’s only the food stamps and cash grant. The subsidized housing is probably worth $2,000 a month on the open market, and I shudder to think what it’s costing the Housing Authority. No mention of cost of the subsidized health care through Medicaid or what they use for transportation.
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/09/13/n_poverty_america_ann.cnnmoney
Whether it’s banksters, wars or welfare queens, the average taxpayer feels like they have no control and the demands on them only increase. That’s the reason for the rise of the Tea Party. As people turn away from government, the incentive to support it disappears. The main difference between Greece and the USA is that Greece never developed an efficient tax collection system, so it’s a lot easier to just say no over there.
Jim,
That link you posted to the absurdreport.com is chilling. I am astounded at how the criminal superrich have not only made greed a virtue, but they are now expecting poor people to worship them? Disgusting. Hitler expected the same of those below him.
And just to be clear, it’s not the top 49% that I have issues with. It’s the top 1% who did most of the looting and stealing.
Re #6, a website with the tag line ” “The Absurd Report…chasing liberals like villagers after Frankenstein” ~Doug Giles” is probably not a source for the kind of reliable fact based information that I value from blogs like this. The washington post two days ago has a nice series of 6 charts showing how the “50% of American’s don’t pay income taxes” seriously misrepresents who pays any kind of taxes. Please find it here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/tax-reality-check/notax.html
Interesting, according to the charts, approximately 500,000 individuals in the USA making MORE THAN $103,465 a year don’t pay any income taxes.
Hmmm, being married to a greek girl, two points, the Germans have yet to return the gold they stole from the Greek government during the second world war and if the Gestapo and the SS ubermensch couldnt get money out of individual Greeks without very great difficulty what chance does the greek government have?
For a second I was tempted to write something almost like Tony in #11 (including it’s invocation of Godwin’s law). I’ll just point out that Whittle, the self confessed former poor man, goes right to the strawman argument by using Colbert and that’s not cool. Also, comparing European living space to American living space is not cool either.
Ack, I meant to type “Tony in #9″…my bad, long weekend.
I’m no fan of Mr. Whiffleball, I just post stuff that people send me as evidence of how far out there some factions are.
Again, it was a JOKE.