Sounds like Nova Scotia.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 4:07 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] A pronto return of the Greek Colonels The extent to which Greece is saturated with tax evasion was well illustrated in John Humphries' excellent BBC Panorama programme last Monday. As well as showing the varying degrees of poverty now descending on most of the population, Humphries had a chat with a Prof Diomidis Spinellis, one of Greece's top software engineers. Some two years ago, he was asked by the Finance Minister to devise a method to replace the self-reporting tax forms currently in use by those who work for themselves -- rich businessmen but also the hundreds of thousands of professionals such as lawyers, doctors, accountants and dentists who have lovely houses, swimming pools in the garden, top marque cars, yachts in the local marina, expensive private education for their children, etc but declare no taxable income at all. Prof Spinellis did so and delivered his report to the government minister. It would not have saved Greece's financial predicament immediately but would have been a big step forward. Being on the young side of middle age, Spinellis was naive enough to hope that some reform would actually emerge. Nothing happened. He then realized that the government's own taxation officials were explicitly involved. A great deal of the untaxed money was going into officials' pockets. Any possibility of reform was being sabotaged at a high level. For his own satisfaction, Spinellis then set about devising an improvement to his proposed system that would also render it fool-proof at its collection end. He delivered this report to the government also. A great deal happened then. The senior tax collector's union sued him. The Panorama programme didn't say, but, presumably, this attempt fell by the wayside because Prof Spinellis didn't appear to be too hazed as he related it. (Perhaps Greece still has uncorrupt judges?) Anyhow, the net result was just the same -- no action by the government. John Humphries asked whether anything could be done at all. "Nothing can be done to improve the present system." Spinellis replied. "A completely new system must be brought in from the start." Well, since the programme must have been recorded at least two or three weeks ago, a new election has taken place since. The new government has not announced the possibility of any new tax system. Instead, it wants even more concessions from the Eurozone. German workers will no longer tolerate further subsidies into what they see as a bottomless pit. Greece's imminent exit from the Eurozone seems almost certain now. If Spinellis's opinion is any guide, then corruption is already so deep in what I call the 20-class that only some sort of revolution or coup d'etat that institutes a realistic taxation system could then rescue Greece from further penury. The epigenetic propensities to simple authoritarianism, last expressed by years of acquiescence during the 'Regime of the Colonels' in the 1970s, will still be present in the Greek culture. Once Greece's exit from the Eurozone takes place then I would bet that an army take-over, rather than a revolution from the streets, will be the likely -- and immediate -- outcome. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
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