Greece demanding 382 billion from Germany for WWII

[Tempest]

I can't believe this is actually in NYT but it is:

Quote:
The expansion of Greece’s huge government sector took decades to create, but its growth in recent years has been particularly striking. Public employment grew by fivefold from 1970 through 2009 — at an annual growth rate of 4 percent, according to a recent academic study by Zafiris Tzannatos and Iannis Monogios.. Over the same four decades, employment in the private sector increased by only 27 percent — an annual rate of less than 1 percent.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/the-cost-of-protecting-greeces-public-sector.html?_r=0

If government created wealth, it wouldn't need the power tax. The people of Greece are learning this very hard lesson first hand.

 

[javacontour]

Yes I did. Tried to reply before, but my mobile was not cooperating.

Citing demographics is only one picture. Let's assume your 91% is an objective fact. What is the purpose of the war on poverty? It was to eliminate poverty. You don't fight something to keep it around and manage it.

So it doesn't matter if your figure is 91% or even 100% of recipients. The salient issue is why has poverty remained stubbornly the same rough percentage five decades after the war on poverty. That's two generations.

My wife, oilBabe, is a social worker. Guess what? She deals with third generation recipients of welfare. Their career has been getting the government check and passing down those skills to the follow-on generation.

I know, anecdote. But the fact that the numbers have been largely resistant to government efforts, not to mention the overlaps and other redundancies in the programs leads us to question the efficacy of the programs.

If you are not fixing poverty, it really doesn't matter if 100% of the recipients are Mother Teresa, the problem is not getting solved.

How does this relate to Greece. I see a scenario where Greece is that multi-generational recipient family. If something doesn't change, the Euro will simply keep sending checks to Greece. Greece doesn't work and change it's circumstance. They just voted in a government that promised to end austerity and renegotiate the debts.

So basically, they don't want to take their medicine and fix the problems. They want to borrow and spend more.

While it may be painful in the short term for the rest of the Euro as well as Greece, it may be best in the long term if Greece is booted from the Euro, gets their own currency and has to face the consequences of their fiscal policy by not being able to rely on the stronger overall credit of the Euro.

Greece was able to obtain loans at rates lower than it might as a separate nation. They benefit from the stronger overall credit of their Euro partners. However, they don't have the economy and apparently the fiscal restraint to be trusted with the Euro credit card.

So perhaps the best course of action for all is an exit from the Euro.

After all, it doesn't seem that what the Euro Zone members have been doing is working, so perhaps a change of course is in order.

Much like the state of our welfare system. It's not really fixing anything here in the US.

Originally Posted By: Mykl
Originally Posted By: javacontour
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA694.pdf

CATO Institute study of welfare spending and efficacy .



Did you read this before you posted it?

It says precisely zero about the demographics of who uses these programs. It talks about dollars spent and speculates about the effectiveness.

 

[1 FMF]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
I can't believe this is actually in NYT but it is:

Quote:
The expansion of Greece’s huge government sector took decades to create, but its growth in recent years has been particularly striking. Public employment grew by fivefold from 1970 through 2009 — at an annual growth rate of 4 percent, according to a recent academic study by Zafiris Tzannatos and Iannis Monogios.. Over the same four decades, employment in the private sector increased by only 27 percent — an annual rate of less than 1 percent.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/the-cost-of-protecting-greeces-public-sector.html?_r=0

If government created wealth, it wouldn't need the power tax. The people of Greece are learning this very hard lesson first hand.


the study was done by this guy

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
You don't fight something to keep it around and manage it.


All of that managing buys lots of votes....

And when 29% of the workers in a country are employed by the government, it's a hard voting block to upset.

 

[firemachine69]

Originally Posted By: Mykl
Originally Posted By: andrewg
Originally Posted By: Mykl
What does any of that have to do with my contention regarding the attitude that welfare recipients are lazy deadbeats? How is anything that you are saying at all relevant?

The merits of these programs is a different conversation. I am very specifically addressing the hateful, ugly, and unproductive attitude toward the people whom these programs benefit, not whether or not they should exist in the first place.


You quote the "statistics" of the CBPP as though this leftist think tank designed to promote progressive viewpoints, is above reproach....simply because it supports your ideology.

You obviously have not been around welfare recipients first-hand. Or....you just choose to disregard reality.

So I'm "hateful and ugly" because I don't like to support those that won't??

Ok.


No, you're hateful and ugly because you're lumping all welfare recipients in with the actual deadbeats and lazy people. You're lumping them all together without even entertaining the possibility that maybe people on these programs are in situations that are more complicated than "just wants to sit on the couch and watch Netflix."

It's fine to feel resentful towards people who game the system and abuse it. But it's not fine to show the same attitude towards the millions of people on these programs who built the country you're living in, giving you all the advantages you have. Nor is it fine to say such words about the disabled, many of whom literally can't survive without this assistance.

Originally Posted By: Mykl
This is the best source that I have found even when considering the possibility of bias. I am always open to new sources of information, because if there are better ones I'd like the opportunity to adjust how I view this particular subject.


Please, do feel free to offer up a better source with a more transparent system for evaluating the subject.

Because you haven't, I suppose I should either assume that it's because you don't have one, or because you're lazy.

I have actually been around welfare recipients, and I did not at all think that my parents or grandparents were lazy deadbeats. But to be fair, that's anecdotal, which is basically meaningless, much like the evidence you've offered up to back up your hateful comments.




I think you're confusing the "disabled" (which half are fraud artists anyways) with "welfare" (no desire to work).

Don't want stigma?

DON'T COLLECT WELFARE!!!

 

[antiqueshell]

Originally Posted By: turtlevette
I'm not going to read this thread.

My opinion. Make Germany pay. The SOBs started 2 wars and almost ended the world. How can you put a price on that.



Germany did not start WW I.

 

[turtlevette]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
I'm not going to read this thread.

My opinion. Make Germany pay. The SOBs started 2 wars and almost ended the world. How can you put a price on that.



Germany did not start WW I.


Ok that makes it all better then.

 

[hattaresguy]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
I'm not going to read this thread.

My opinion. Make Germany pay. The SOBs started 2 wars and almost ended the world. How can you put a price on that.



Germany did not start WW I.


Ehh they didn't tell the Austro Hungarian Empire not to invade either.

The rotting house of Habsburg would not have done anything without tacit German approval.

 

[Jetronic]

Technically, France and Great-Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 aswell... Which was a couple of years too late, tbh...

 

[Mr Nice]

If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.

 

[Jetronic]

We all might be talking russian now, but I doubt we'd be talking german...

By that I mean that Germany got lucky by blitzing France, but bit off more than it could chew with the Russians.

what if the Japanese had left US interests alone in the pacific, and concentrated on european colonies and the Soviet Union? The USA wouldn't have intervened in that case...

 

[hattaresguy]

Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.


More accurately if it wasn't for the Red Army. We really did very little land fighting in Europe compared to the Russians.

People in the US don't really understand the scale difference between the Eastern and Western fronts.

To put it in perspective imagine millions of soldiers fighting in the US for 4 years from the Mississippi to the east coast and from FL to the Canadian border, with a level of brutality equal to lets say Iwo Jima. Also of course everything in that territory of value would be reduced to rubble, and the civilian population displaced.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.


More accurately if it wasn't for the Red Army. We really did very little land fighting in Europe compared to the Russians.

People in the US don't really understand the scale difference between the Eastern and Western fronts.

To put it in perspective imagine millions of soldiers fighting in the US for 4 years from the Mississippi to the east coast and from FL to the Canadian border, with a level of brutality equal to lets say Iwo Jima. Also of course everything in that territory of value would be reduced to rubble, and the civilian population displaced.




The Russians paid dearly for that however. They lost more people than everybody else put together IIRC. It was 20-something million people. I still don't think the Russians would have beat the Germans if they (the Nazi's) weren't fighting a war on two fronts. Had Hitler gone for the Red's first and left the west alone, he would have taken them. The losses alone prove that IMHO. The Germans were better equipped, better trained, better in basically every aspect. The Russians just kept throwing people at the problem. Ultimately the Nazi's stretched themselves too thin with a host of poor decision and the idea that a war on two front was sustainable and things went sideways in a hurry.

That's not to say a Nazi occupation of Russia could have lasted. Simply that they could have succeeded in taking the country. Occupation is a whole other matter.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.


More accurately if it wasn't for the Red Army. We really did very little land fighting in Europe compared to the Russians.

Huh?? the Russians didn't get west of eastern Germany til 1945. The Rusians fought on their own doorstep only.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.


More accurately if it wasn't for the Red Army. We really did very little land fighting in Europe compared to the Russians.

People in the US don't really understand the scale difference between the Eastern and Western fronts.

To put it in perspective imagine millions of soldiers fighting in the US for 4 years from the Mississippi to the east coast and from FL to the Canadian border, with a level of brutality equal to lets say Iwo Jima. Also of course everything in that territory of value would be reduced to rubble, and the civilian population displaced.




The Russians paid dearly for that however. They lost more people than everybody else put together IIRC. It was 20-something million people. I still don't think the Russians would have beat the Germans if they (the Nazi's) weren't fighting a war on two fronts. Had Hitler gone for the Red's first and left the west alone, he would have taken them. The losses alone prove that IMHO. The Germans were better equipped, better trained, better in basically every aspect. The Russians just kept throwing people at the problem. Ultimately the Nazi's stretched themselves too thin with a host of poor decision and the idea that a war on two front was sustainable and things went sideways in a hurry.

That's not to say a Nazi occupation of Russia could have lasted. Simply that they could have succeeded in taking the country. Occupation is a whole other matter.


I agree with you. As a whole, the Wehrmacht was a superior fighting force than the Red army. Generally better tactics, training, and most weaponry. The battlefield leadership was also top notch.

Fighting on two big fronts is never a good idea though. Unless you've got tremendous resources.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: andrewg
Generally better tactics. The battlefield leadership was also top notch.

Unfortunately for the Russians, Stalin executed most of his best generals..lol.
And from the beginning of Russian campaign..German Generals had their hands tied by the upper comand (Hitler)

 

[hattaresguy]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
If it weren't for the USA ...

There would be no Great Britain, France, or other Mickey Mouse countries n Europe.


More accurately if it wasn't for the Red Army. We really did very little land fighting in Europe compared to the Russians.

People in the US don't really understand the scale difference between the Eastern and Western fronts.

To put it in perspective imagine millions of soldiers fighting in the US for 4 years from the Mississippi to the east coast and from FL to the Canadian border, with a level of brutality equal to lets say Iwo Jima. Also of course everything in that territory of value would be reduced to rubble, and the civilian population displaced.




The Russians paid dearly for that however. They lost more people than everybody else put together IIRC. It was 20-something million people. I still don't think the Russians would have beat the Germans if they (the Nazi's) weren't fighting a war on two fronts. Had Hitler gone for the Red's first and left the west alone, he would have taken them. The losses alone prove that IMHO. The Germans were better equipped, better trained, better in basically every aspect. The Russians just kept throwing people at the problem. Ultimately the Nazi's stretched themselves too thin with a host of poor decision and the idea that a war on two front was sustainable and things went sideways in a hurry.

That's not to say a Nazi occupation of Russia could have lasted. Simply that they could have succeeded in taking the country. Occupation is a whole other matter.


Yes and no is the simple answer to that. Again since the Soviet Union sealed a lot of the combat records until recently a lot of battles on the Eastern front, and I mean large battles on the scale of Kursk not little ones were not even known about in the west.

You have to remember until oh about 5 years ago we only knew about the fighting in the east from the German perspective, and their perspective is just that theirs.

The truth is a bit different.

1. The German army did not just march to the gates of Moscow in 1941 with more or less little resistance. The truth is the Russians mounted continues large scale attacks more or less constantly. I'm talking about multiple Russian Army fronts, half a million troops in some cases. Hitlers order to hold fast in 1941 was correct because if the German army had moved from their more or less fortified positions they would have suffered massive losses. Interesting the advance of the German ground forces into Russia went exactly as their logistics department said it would, they simply ran out of supplies.

You have to remember the German army did not lack winter gear because they forgot winter was coming. The lacked it because they did not have the rail and truck capacity to bring it up along with the fuel and ammunition they needed. They had a choice bullets or coats, they chose bullets. Again this is all in a German army report from about 1940 warning the high command of this, and it later proved to be accurate.

2. As a result of this in the summer of 1942 the Germans had to seek a more limited offensive. Hence Case Blue. The Russians continued with their massive counter attacks but like any army in combat were starting to rebuild and become affective again. If you read memoirs of lower ranking German officers you will start to see this. While in 42 they could still do pretty much whatever they wanted the Russians were learning and by 43 they were decent commanders and soldiers.

3. By 1943 the Red Army had learned to fight, and was able to pin the Germans down to more or less small tactical operations. Kursk is the most widely known battle in 1943 but again, their were many others the west did not know about. Up until this point we had very little impact on the war with German troop dispositions still over 80%+ in the east. German war production peaked in 1944 as well so our bombing had limited affects.

By the time we made a meaningful impact in 1944 the German army in general was mostly bleed white and on the brink of collapse. The German lines in the east did actually collapse in 1944 right before we landed and they managed to patch them up. In Normandy we pretty much came up against mostly garrison troops and third rate units. All the good units were either dead or in combat in the east. If they had the same quality of units say they lost with the 6th Army in 1942 the invasion would have been impossible.

Just recently historians have been going into the Russian archives and all kinds of interesting material is being dug up. The Russians not wanting to admit military failure covered up a lot of the early battles they lost, even some large tank battles on the scale of Kursk.

 

[hattaresguy]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: andrewg
Generally better tactics. The battlefield leadership was also top notch.

Unfortunately for the Russians, Stalin executed most of his best generals..lol.
And from the beginning of Russian campaign..German Generals had their hands tied by the upper comand (Hitler)


See that's a myth the German generals have been very good at perpetrating. Hitler did not interfere any more or less than any other commander in chief during the war. Also when he did sometimes he was correct, sometimes he was wrong.

A lot of the generals Manstein for example wanted to take some very large risks and Hitler was actually pretty risk adverse so he stopped him. Our commanders, British commanders, and Russian commanders ran into the same thing.

Also a lot of times the guys asking for withdrawals did not see the entire picture.

For example the 6th Army in Stalingrad was told to stay put because it was tying up a massive amount of Soviet forces. Forces that had the army tried to break out could have destroyed it faster or pushed threw the massive gap in their lines they were trying to patch. Remember that gap was huge and if the Russians drove in deep enough could have cut off many more German soldiers in the caucuses.

But don't take my word for it:
“If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary.”
-Erich von Manstein

 

[javacontour]

What a topic shift.

The Russian advantage was two-fold.

First, they had far more resources in terms of men, materiel and natural resources.

Second, they built one of the best tanks of WWII, the T34. They produced more T34's than all other German tanks combined. Add in the rest of what the Soviets produced and they outproduced the Germans 2:1.

German tanks of 44-45 were superior to the US Sherman, but they didn't have it as easy against Soviet armor.

I just thought of a third advantage, the Soviets didn't have Hitler. The German generals and soldiers may have been better trained, but that advantage was squandered by Hitler as he wouldn't take their advice.

 

[hattaresguy]

Quantity has a quality all to itself.

Heinz Guderian said as early as the invasion that it was a bad idea, but later on he stressed the concentration and construction of one tank. Instead of the kaleidoscope of models and tank destroyers which they produced.

Never got that far but Guderian wanted them to produce lots of "good enough" ie up graded Panzer 4's, and maybe later on Panther's if conditions permitted.

But like most good ideas Guderian had it was largely ignored.

The T34 caused the most heart burn in 1942 because most of the German anti tank guns were under 40mm at the time and were simply to small. Contrary to popular belief tank vs tank combat is a waste of armor and the Germans avoided it whenever possible. Tanks were saved for punching threw lines and exploiting gains, they would avoid protracted engagements with enemy armor. Enemy armor was dealt with with anti tank guns, like the 88.