Posted by Leonard Steinberg on June 20th, 2012

As the “Great Greek Tragedy” unfolds, there are so many lessons to be learned. This is what I am seeing:

1)   It is clearly evident that salaried people are those carrying the brunt of the tax burden in Greece: that burden will more than quadruple now to pay for those who don’t want to pay taxes. We scorn this, but the system isn’t all that different in the USA:  the bulk of those EVIL Wall Streeters also earn their incomes via salaries, so they also do not have the numerous tax deductions that the self employed or corporations have….or the super-rich who pay lower rates. Why does Madonna not disclose her tax returns for all to see? So many laughed when Wall Street bonuses were cut dramatically only to discover that the coffers in Albany had much less income because of that….

2)  The Greeks have come up with a REAL ESTATE SOLUTION for collecting taxes……by cutting off electricity to those not paying!  Imagine if all the electricity was cut to APPLE because they paid under 10% in corporate taxes while the bulk of small businesses around the country had to pay more than triple?

3)  The most important Greek lesson I learned:  Talk of reducing the tax rates has made the number of tax filings GROW. AH-HAH: SO if you were to be certain to collect all taxes uniformly and fairly at the same rate, you could actually lower the rates for ALL and collect MORE? Now throw in less spending abuses….

Maybe in housing lies the answer to tax collecting: cut off basic services to those who abuse the system?