"Hasn't it been proven that austerity measures don't work anyways?"

What austerity? They reduced the amount of money they were spending, but it was still more than they were taking in taxes. That's like only adding $1000 a month on your credit card instead of $2000. Ooooo looky I "cut" spending. Kind of like Obama and Congress here in the States.

The flip side of austerity is if you are unwilling to cut spending you have to make more money to pay the debt. The Greek people are unwilling to work nor are they willing to pay more, so they now have their current mess.

All that has been proven is that you should never loan money to dead beats and expect to be paid back.

"Funny fact" People die because that's what people eventually do after they are born. History is filled with deaths of billions of people. It's sort of normal. Now if you are suggesting the budgets are out rioting in the street murdering people then I would agree with you they probably need to be stopped. Since that is not the case I think your bias is showing.

The Greek people need to pull their collective heads out of their collective asses or they will starve, and die off, until they do. There is no free lunch. No one owes them a god damn thing. Grow up and stop behaving like socialists.

Greece is getting thrown under the bus, "austerity". Aka lower living standards for the working class. It's already " live within your means " with you people. The Greeks weren't living the high life. A bunch of Rick asshats were passing bad debt around during the housing boom and Greece got caught holding the bag. If a big country like Germany had done it no harm no foul. It was too much for Greece though. And the powers that be are gonna use this to steal a bunch of old v folks pensions.

You also have to have a decent place to plug it in. Most people do not have a convenient 110 plug right next to the car, much less a 220 plug, in their garage. That is if they can even get it in the garage with all the junk they have in there.

You first clue should be the word "Chevy" there are a great many of us who will NEVER buy a GM product again just on principle. Second, it's a dog for $35K. I could go get a much nicer car for the same price that has better performance and similar fuel economy. Third GM isn't exactly known for quality work. I wouldn't know anymore because I'll never make it past the 1st reason.

Show me an electric 4x4 truck under $50K that is as good or better than the gas ones and I'll take one tomorrow. The End.

_after_ gov't subsidies. It's also a tiny little car that does poorly in crashes. Why in hells name would I spend that kind of money? I could buy a Versa or an egg (excuse me, the Yaris) for $10k less and get the same features. There's no way in hell that car is going to save me $10k over the course of it's life. It doesn't help that it's a Chevy...

it's that wages aren't coming close to matching real inflation. By "real" I mean inflation of necessities (food, shelter and in this case transportation). It's a fact that wages have been declining for 40 years. Also when I was a kid I could get a pretty nice beater for a grand. Work part time over a summer and you had a car you could putz around in. That same kind of beater is $3-$5k now...

Seriously. I've got to see this.

Sure, it's dog slow, but it's hit the asphalt at least twice now and it's still kickin'. Hell, if they'd stop putting a heavy piece of glass on them to make them feel less like the cheap toys they are my kid's iPhone would stop breaking when she drops it.

Not in America anyway. The laws changed and you can no longer discharge debt less than 100k. It's not the clean slate it used to be.

That's really the biggest trouble in America today. Everyone believes there's this safety net, but it's gone. Clinton gutted it in the 90s during the .com boom while the economy was doing so well nobody noticed...

You know that whole pooling of massive amounts of wealth over generations would apply to you too if the government didn't step in and take half of it while you make it and then another half after you die.

At 8% interest and $25 a month from the month you are born till you are age 72 you would be a multi-millionaire.

it has to do with how a dollar circulates. I'm in pretty bad shape financially. I had 3 close family members get hit with major illnesses all at once. I'm still recovering and I'm not sure I ever will. What I'm saying is I spend just about ever dollar I get my hands on paying debt and buying food/shelter/transportation. There's a little discretionary funds in there for my kid. I try to let her do thing things her friends (who's parents didn't get economically cock punched non stop for 10 years) do.

Now take a Donald Trump. No matter how greedy he is there's only just so much he can buy. At some point his money is just sitting around, doing nothing. He'll invest some of it, lose some of it, etc. But He's only got so much time in the day to do that. Eventually it becomes a war chest laying around doing nothing.

When we take it even further, to the level the Waltons have achieved what we have is pretty much the dark ages. You've got a small group of folks with _all_ the wealth. They're more or less Gods (Divine Right of Kings, anyone?). They stop investing because, heh, why should they? They already have the best civilization has to offer. As a result things can really only get worse for them.

If the above sounds complicated it's because it is. That's what makes cutting the marginal tax rate so seductive. It sound like an easy answer to the world's problems. Supply side economics, right? But there really is a reason we called them Voodoo Economics...

and he basically said it wouldn't stop him from making more money. We're talking 5% of _billions_ here after all.

you're still living very, very well. Also, these high level marginal tax rates are about the only thing that I've ever seen that solves the problems with income inequality. Specifically how a civilization leans towards oligarchy and stagnation as a smaller and smaller group of people claim all the money for themselves. Wealth builds on wealth, and at least here in America we don't see any end to that. The pie might get bigger, but if my slice gets tinnier ever year it hardly matters...

Put another way, I saw an interview with a multi millionaire complaining she didn't have any political voice anymore because the billionaires money crowded her out...