What It Means To Fix A Generous, Socialist Economy … take Note Old Bernie

What does the following mean to you? Probably not much, but there are lessons to learn for our society. Sooner or later our spending catches up to us and when it does, everybody pays … or suffers.

Regular readers may recall me harping on this theme and I will continue to do so. Why? Because it is very disturbing that so many Americans seem to be buying into the notion that government can provide more and more “free” stuff without consequences. Americans such as though rallying around Bernie Sanders need to get a grip, look about the world and see what reality looks like. Already nearly half of all Americans do not pay an income tax, but many of those consume a big chunk of entitlements. We simply can’t continue this way let alone expand that scenario. 

To in­crease rev­enue, Greece will raise the sales, or value-added, tax on restaurants to the max­i­mum rate of 23% and phase out dis­counts for busi­nesses on Greek islands, ex­cept for the most re­mote ones.

The pen­sion over­haul includes elim­i­nat­ing a con­trover­sial supplementary payment to the poor­est re­tirees be­tween March 2016 and the end of 2019.

The pro­pos­als in­clude an increase to cor­po­rate taxes to 28% from 26%, which had been ac­cepted by cred­i­tors in ear­lier plans. The new proposal no longer has a one-off tax on com­pa­nies for this year, which the IMF in par­tic­u­lar has fought against.

Excerpts: WSJ 7-9-15