NP - And Greece created Europe: the cultural legacy of a nation in crisis

[Ian Livingston]

> Similarly, big US cities are often the profit centers providing
> subsidies to the less afluent cities and towns that surround them.
>
> Incomes from richer entities are typically redistributed to poorer ones.

Right, at least that's the idea. However, due to a gradual whittling
away at the basis of that model, that is, incomes from richer entities
being taxed, the redistribution has become an abysmal failure. That's
why the students at the University of California are protesting. As I
understand it, the redistribution of state funds is now drawing on a
deficit because the tax burden here rests on a middle class that is
rapidly disappearing. So, the effect on the federal budget is likewise
affected. The wealth remains with the richer entities and the poor are
left to share their poverty while the rich outsource the labor to
cheaper markets and the gulf widens like California slipping off into
the ocean....

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 2:59 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  In the US rich states routine subsidize poor states through Federal taxes, and no one feels abused.
>>
>> Um, perhaps I've missed something in the current political dialog.
>
> Think of Greece as the State of Mississippi.  It is a net Federal Tax
> receiver (gets back more than it pays).  We don't hear about rich
> States begrudging that fact.
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant