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China's recent successful manned mission has started a space race debate








Source: Yahoo News

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RE: Uncompetitive Policies Will Be Our Downfal
By Strunf on 6/21/2012 7:35:44 AM , Rating: 2
Australia is hardly a good example... its population is rather small 22 million, or 2x the population of Greece but unlike Greece it has a huge amount of natural resources...

RE: Uncompetitive Policies Will Be Our Downfal
By Aries1470 on 6/21/2012 1:42:35 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, you are wrong!
Greece DOES have plenty of Natural Resources, but lacks in Political Will (aka Balls), for the Good of the Nation and not lining EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN and all others in line too!

Even the workers were paying workers to do their job while the new Athens Metro was being built!

Greece does have Gas & Oil Reserves but has not taken advantage of them due to political infight and who would get their "miza"!

Australia done so well because the People here did NOT HAVE 100+ "tameia" (social security companies...) that is for their pension, they have a compulsary Super Annuation... that is different for every sector but people can choose their own in most cases, and pension is done from a goverment agency depandant on what they have. If they have a good income come pension age, they are not entitled to it. Occassionly there can be mistakes, but in general it works!

BUT the biggest issue is, that TAX IS COLLECTED DIRECTLY FROM THE EMPLOYER and passed to the Tax office.
Australians are also one of the highest taxed people for low to middle income earners about 20%-35%, and if you do NOT declare your TFN (Tax File Number) to your employer, it goes to 50%. The rich as always, anywhere they are, know how to get around the loopholes.

So, get the old mines open again, get the Natural Resources up and running, since the surveys had been completed in the 1970's & 80's! but the infight for who to auction off to, and then cancelation with each government changing, like N.D. & PASOK... not to mention the mis-management of the economy too. The economists knew already that this would be happening from the mid 1980's!

So get your facts right. When Greece was shown how to improve and compete, they snobbed it. When they tried to merge the "Tameia", everyone, as is "normal" there, went on strikes and made the government unstable!
Get of your high horses and get a reality check.
That is what I will leave it at.

Greece DOES have natural resources, as in Metals and black gold and Electricity too!

Get the Tidal generators going - under water, so electricity and de-salination, Athens knows it needs it..., the Oil Wells and the large & smaller mines (the argument being... but they will not be profitable making billions when they can only make plenty of millions attitude) that have been abononed or not started, and get ALL the people to support the reforms with-out the "fakelakia"(envelopes under the table) & "mizes" (hush-hush money for winning a project) and let the winner be on merit for once!

By JediJeb on 6/21/2012 2:42:30 PM , Rating: 2

This is something that is killing the US budget also because we are not taxing around 50% of the people in the country at all. If we would tax every single person at the exact same rate with no deductions or loopholes, we would probably not have problems with running a deficit. This way everyone pays "their fair share" unlike now when the "fair share" is only paid if someone else is paying it. To pay the extra $1.5 trillion in deficit spending in the current proposed budget it would require an increase of about 30% to all those in the income bracket that actually pay taxes now, but if you include all wage earners(even people receiving 100% from the government in welfare) you could add less than 10% to each person and pay that deficit. It is only a "fair" system when everyone is paying an equal share.

(for the record I make about $45k per year, so I am not one of the 1%ers and I still feel this way about things)

By Strunf on 6/22/2012 8:41:42 AM , Rating: 1
Every country has natural resources... what you fail to see is that is not about having or not resources but what kind of resources and how much, Greece has some Oil but nothing that big 10 million bbl, Australia 3,318 million... they are ranked 89 in terms of proven reserves, Australia 29.
You're wrong when you say they didn't invest in oil exploration, in 2011 the government approved 3 new exploration sites.

Besides Oil Australia has 1/5 of the world reserves of Uranium, lot's of coal and natural gas, but yeah keep comparing both as if they were at the same level.

Let me laugh at your renewal energy sources, they require a huge investment with little to NO PROFIT, only countries that have a very good balance sheet can afford to invest on renewals. Your argument of mines is pure bullshit it's not up to the government to open mines, that is the job of investors and private companies and if they don't do it it's cause there isn't money to be made there.

Greeks do well in protesting, ultimately all these bailouts are done to save the investors (mostly German banks and others) not to save the Greeks.

