The dead horse is, of course, Greece, and for the past eighteen months or so our friends and partners in Europe together with the IMF have done nothing but keep whipping it under the illusion that that is the only way to make it walk again.
Income tax returns were conveniently delayed by the major parties, or what used to be the major parties here in Greece, from March to mid July, so that tax payers would not realise what was install for them and vote for the left leaning SYRIZA or even the Communist Party en masse.
This year Greeks will not be charged income tax according to their income, but will be charged levies determined by whether they own a house, where, how large it is, whether they own a car and so on. And for those with no assets to their name, they will be charged for living in a flat, however small, and not on the streets and of course, so nobody gets away, they will be charged on what is considered a subsistence level of income.
In short income tax will hit appallingly the unemployed, those whose salaries and pensions have been slashed, not to mention those still in work but who haven’t seen a pay check in months. Now, before we go blaming the troika for all of this (and they are not free of blame), it is only fair to point out that this brilliant way of charging income tax on income which does not exist was concocted by the former Minister of Finances Evangelos Venizelos, aka Benny. Now this gentleman hasn’t a clue about how Economics work. But then neither has Angela Merkel I suppose.
Anyhow, between them, the troika and the governments of Papandreou and Papademos contrived to grind the Greek Economy into the ground. Nevertheless, after an electioneering respite, the troika is due back this week to ascertain that none of the anyway unrealistic targets have been met, that although Greece had to make up for a short fall of something like 11 billion it is now probably double that, that Greeks are being paid far too much, even though an exponentially growing number of them is not being paid at all, and so on.
But of course, we can never admit that we got the whole thing wrong, can we? No! It’s all the fault of the slovenly, lazy free riding Greeks! So if they really want the privilege of being loaned more and more money in order to pay off our banks at a nice little rate (since none of this money ever goes into the Greek Economy itself), then we must probably start literally killing off the old age pensioners by Guillotine rather than through refusing them their medication, as we have been doing over the last month or so.
But ladies, gentlemen (or whatever you are) the horse is already dead. You do not need to whip it any more.
And all this talk of a one or two year extension is equally idiotic. It will only extend the agony, the slow, lingering, tortuous death of the whole of Greece and again achieve absolutely nothing. Unless that is indeed the object. The complete destruction of Greece.
If that is indeed the case, wouldn’t it be more merciful to just carpet bomb the whole country and be done with it? And don’t tell me any of you give damn about some silly ruins which the lazy Greek population couldn’t even keep from collapsing!