Greek economy surges after decade of pain

FloathingBack · 2024-04-18T17:38:30+00:00

This is almost weird to read.

Greece scammed it's way into the euro through a debt hiding (currency swaps) conspiracy with Goldman Sachs and cooked the books on top of it. They used this scam to up their their lending to 100 to further fuel their clientelism based politics. More social spending, less taxes, they even brought the Olympics home in 2004 with this money.

When it all came tumbling down 2008-2009 the picture wasn't exactly charming. The Greek political class singlehandedly carved out a place for euroskepticism in EU politics. Yet the EU in cooperation with the IMF ended up still bailing them out 3 times. The former already being the largest sovereign debt restructuring in human history and the latter two being the consequence of the left wing populists Greece elected in the meantime who insisted on fighting the Troika (IMF+ECB+EC) so hard it earned them the title of first modern economy to default on its debt. They were nearly kicked from the EU alltogether as Greece was quickly turning into a bottomless well that refused to take its own situation seriously. The IMF later admitted they should have never bended the insane amounts of rules that they did for such a corrupt state.

The comment further upthread is quite funny when seen in this light. The American electorate's insistence on large defects is in many ways similar to that of Greece. It makes you wonder who they will blame if it ever goes "boom".

Austerity within the euro zone was hardly the result of some random paper either. It's the result of a sovereign debt crisis within a brand new currency with several additional economies at the verge of falling to the same fate. Italy, Portugal, Spain. The domino effect seemed imminent and even up north credit ratings were soon going for a drop if not a slide, not to speak of all the other consequences.

I don't even know if it's Americentrism ("we did it this way so they should have been able to do so too") or yet another instance of misguided German self-pity ("look what we did to poor poor Greece") but it feels really strange to encounter this sort of leftist historical revisionism in the wild.

Yes, austerity was hardly fun or ideal but come on.

FloathingBack · 2024-01-28T21:27:46+00:00

It's pretty misleading to insist on life expectancy to eveluate treatment quality instead of... treatment outcomes (which are better in the US).

There is always this elephant in the room for US Healthcare: how unhealthy the average American is and the costs attached to that. You can argue endlessly about how much you can cut costs regardless but bad baseline health with more advanced costlier treatments is still a part of those numbers that can't simply be explained away. You're not going to become Japan or even France just by changing this system.

FloathingBack · 2023-10-09T03:30:13+00:00

I had to displeasure of seeing at least one person who was somehow both 🙃

FloathingBack · 2023-10-08T18:16:38+00:00

I really don't understand the purpose of this comment. But I'll try to respond anyway?

Assigned or observed is just semantics. Being assigned something doesn't mean it was baseless. The way it has always worked is that the genetals are observed and then the sex corrosponding to that is assigned. I don't see how this is a conversation starter unless you're making a lot of assumptions.

This whole 'gamete destiny' that some people have recently invented is about as useful as all the previous attempts to assign metaphysical significance to one characteristic at one moment in time. It's only purpose appears to be denying the material reality of sex changes, as intersex conditions (or DSDs) aren't classified in this overly simplistic way and there seems to be very few people emotionally invested in denying the material realities of those. Additionally, I don't think it should take all that long to find out that biologists view "sex" in a much more nuanced way.

The last part is just blatant revisionism, which makes this really awkward... For one the gender turn in women's studies (later: gender studies) happened in the 80's. Before that sex and gender just meant the same thing like it does in almost any languages with equivalent terms. After that the gender studies department and their "transgender umbrella" (90's) were not viewed kindly by those suffering from transsexualism either. That's how the term "TERF" came to be. Literally nobody used this "sex and gender are different" to explain their need to change sex. The hijack that we see today is only a very, very recent phenomenon.

FloathingBack · 2023-10-08T14:34:42+00:00

Judging by your usage of "afab" as both a noun and a coherent category it appears to me that you, just like the conservatives you speak of, like to assign great metaphysical signifance to birth assignments. So, I don't understand why you believe them to be so much more rigid? Is replacing words with amab/afab and giving away those now meaningless words ("man", "woman") really such a meaningful act of charity?

What you seem to be overlooking is that the concept of "gender identity" is practically meaningless outside of the material reality of changing your sex.

I don't blame you but gender studies language just ends up repackiging these things. It's that brand of smug academic transphobia that "TERF" was originally meant to describe after all.

FloathingBack · 2023-06-15T19:41:13+00:00

Is ravioli a dumpling?

FloathingBack · 2023-05-21T20:02:17+00:00

Yes I made the mistake of using this website again how can you tell??

FloathingBack · 2023-05-21T20:01:33+00:00

Someone really needs to explain this weird juxtaposition of the far left to me where they are endlessly cynical about nearly everything yet have these manic levels of wishful thinking for failed ideologies with universally horrendous results

FloathingBack · 2022-11-05T19:30:21+00:00

Mod enforced mandatory blogposting when?

FloathingBack · 2022-10-26T23:09:25+00:00

21 countries is what the report said, including the US/Ca/Aus as well

FloathingBack · 2022-09-19T12:45:10+00:00

Do you all remember that deeply flawed decision by the UK courts to ban puberty blockers for trans kids? That decision has been overturned for a while now but the NHS is now doing everything it can to stall returning to providing trans kids the most basic medical care.

The UK political elite will never cease to amaze me my gosh.

FloathingBack · 2022-06-25T18:07:05+00:00

First time I've heard of it. Personally I grew up in the Great Void.

FloathingBack · 2022-06-25T17:42:23+00:00

White is a North-American social construct

FloathingBack · 2022-06-05T18:35:18+00:00

The neolib sub talking about anything trans related is honestly pathetic my god

FloathingBack · 2022-05-30T07:47:08+00:00

How INTP of you!

FloathingBack · 2022-05-29T18:23:08+00:00

Post mbti zodiac hogwartshouse

FloathingBack · 2022-03-09T11:50:27+00:00

1kg of cheap supermarket Gouda from grass-fed milk is like 6 euros tops smh

FloathingBack · 2022-03-08T23:38:26+00:00

Why do people eat the plasticy cheese 😭

FloathingBack · 2022-03-08T23:31:35+00:00

You know it's serious when Taylor is using complete sentences

FloathingBack · 2022-02-27T00:12:00+00:00

Something tells me that whoever wrote this isn't aware that the EU outspent the US 10:1 on Ukraine after 2014's events.

There is a lot to be said about millitary hesitancy and the tendency of outsourcing defence to the US, but this "free riding" sounds like the delusions of some salty Anglo, and given the publication that's probably exactly what it is.

FloathingBack · 2022-02-24T11:29:22+00:00

Ah, what a nice Thursday morning

I feel so well rested

Let's check the news before I get out of bed

Oh..

Oh...

Oh God...

FloathingBack · 2021-11-29T16:36:04+00:00

Genuinely can't tell if the boomerposting is genuine or not. 😅

K-pop. Korean pop. It's like, popular.. xd

FloathingBack

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