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Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters
Greece's Prime Minister Lucas Papademos addresses parliamentarians Tuesday before the 2012 budget vote in Athens.
Greece's coalition government on Wednesday passed an austerity 2012 budget aimed at shrinking its debt mountain with tax hikes and spending cuts, hours after protesters clashed with police outside parliament.
Three major parties backing technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos solidly voted for the budget, a package of deeply unpopular measures needed to cut the deficit and show foreign lenders the country is sorting out its finances.
"Successful implementation of this budget will restore the country's international credibility and create the conditions to rescue the economy," Papademos told lawmakers. "We can't afford to keep whining...the targets are ambitious but feasible."
But one of the leaders, conservative party leader Antonis Samaras, made clear his support was solely aimed at rescuing Greece from immediate default and vowed to soften tax steps and boost growth measures if he wins power in elections expected in February.
"Our disagreements remain... we are approving the budget because it is an absolute priority to safeguard the viability of Greek debt," said Samaras, whose New Democracy party is the front-runner to win the next election but fall short of an absolute majority.
Samaras, who has long opposed the EU/IMF austerity policies imposed by his Socialist rival, former prime minister George Papandreou, under a 110-billion euro bailout agreed in 2010, made clear he will insist on snap elections in February, after Athens clinches a bond swap deal to cut the country's debt.
As lawmakers debated the budget, hundreds of masked youths hurled petrol bombs and clashed with Greek police outside parliament. See the story here.
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Taxes are necessary, but it's important that you have some type of progressive tax structure. Something opposite of what Bush did in America.
The U.S. tax structure was progressive before Bush and remains progressive after his tax cuts. Do you understand what progressive means?
Progressive taxation means that the more money you earn, the higher your tax rate.
A progressive income tax is one of the 10 basic tenets or Marx's Communist Manifesto.
FYI - The "Progressive Party" was established in 1928. Guess who by - The American Communist Party. Those people calling themselves Progressives don't even realize they are being used.
How bout an "increasing tax scale", but it sounds discouraging and demotivating as in "if you make more you might get bumped into a higher tax bracket", or "we'll set you back a peg or two", and who likes that? even though it's a good thing to be in a higher tax bracket and that's the way it should be it doesn't feel good. People should be able to feel good about paying more taxes, it is still a sign of being successful.
It's a move in the right direction.
Stay tuned - Coming to America soon if Obama doesn't quit his spending spree. FYI - BHO has added $5.4 trillion to our debt in just 35 months. Where as Bush added (about 4 Trillions) in 8 years.
GREECE is so corrupt no amount of austerity or tax hikes will do it. Their system is so Byzantine that it is the only country where the system brought down the banks not the other way around.
The Greek people have been deprived of a third of their land by Turkish aggression and genocide...aided and encouraged by the former British Empire. Rather then condemn Greece for failure to live within their "means"...why not use NATO for a worthwhile purpose..restore Ionia,Northern Cyprus and Eastern Thrace (including Constantinople) to Greek sovereignty...then let the Greek people prosper...with revenues from the Black Sea trade and new lands in Asia Minor!!
NO FREE TRADE WITHOUT FULL EMPLOYMENT!!