..After a wave of crime, tough times, cuts will have to be done since they simply don’t have the money to pay anyways. Like our nice state of CA...They can raise all the taxes, but if people leave the state or simply find ways to not pay, people will just leave or the state (or country) has no choice but to cut services…
At that point, I think the Greece people will maybe wake up and decide if they want to stick it out and actually pay for stuff finally or just descend into a mess of a country.[/quote]
Care to elaborate how is California is similar to Greece? Is it the 25% drop of GDP from its peak? Is it 25.6% unemployment rate? Or are you implying Californians are evading taxes like Greek people?[/quote]
My point is that CA also has pension problems as most states in the US. CA has ALREADY raised taxes for medicare for the wealthy and some cities (SF comes to mind) has a “special tax” just to pay for healthcare for city workers I think.
There is also an added state income tax in CA where you pay an extra 3% or something if income is > 250k I think. Someone here rich can post the rule since it doesn’t affect poor me…
I am saying if Greece leaves the Euro, they will be now FORCED to do these things since they simply don’t bring in enough revenue to pay out current liabilities. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for CA, CA has lots of “rich” upper class worker bees to pay (rich companies don’t pay any tax since most offshore it all and have lower tax rates than you or me) and Greece seems to have a history of tax evaders in general. I’m sure the GDP of CA is massive compared to Greece (8th in the whole world) so CA can do lots of things to deal with misc “problems” here vs. Greece.
Also, there isn’t a massive exodus of people leaving CA (see property prices in SF or LA?) even with these wealth income taxes so CA seems to be managing their financial issues fine compared to Greece. Not to mention people actually voted for the tax increase.
I wonder how Vallejo is doing or other bankrupt cities. If they implemented a special tax in certain cities, it seems easier to just shop somewhere else or leave (so if Greece gives you painful austerity or taxes or spending cuts, why not just leave?).
