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Comment by neilwilson | Hacker News Reader

Greece isn't a country. It's a component of the Eurozone. In that system the ECB is the government.

All countries issue currency as spending because that's how banking works - even if they settle up into something else by the end of the day. Intraday banking can't work any other way.

Politicians are elected so they are entitled to spend what they can get past the legislature - and nobody else should be able to stop them. Otherwise we don't live in a democracy.

You don't need Revenue and taxation. Taxes for revenue is an obsolete concept as Beardsley Ruml pointed out in the 1940s.

As is the idea of fractional banking systems. They don't exist. Loans create deposits, and always have. As the Bank of England explained very clearly in 2014.

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Greece actually is a country. A state. Whether it is part of the Eurozone or not doesn't change this.

Money is not magic. The value of money represents the value of the goods and services produced by the entity that issues it. Every dollar spent by government takes a dollar (of value) from its citizens, sometimes even more.

Government takes money from its citizens in two ways–

1. Taxation- front door theft en masse that is moralized by those who control the spending. A slight bit might be moral, e.g. to keep people from starving to death, but no where near what is commonly taken. "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." –The Matrix

2. Inflation– back door theft en masse that is never moral except perhaps to blunt mass murder through a war of aggression against the nation. e.g. Real national security where many millions would die otherwise, not fake national security where the government says that if you share a fact they don't want you to, you go to jail for life. It happens any time government spends money it hasn't raised through taxation. "Inflation is taxation without legislation." –Milton Friedman

>Greece isn't a country.

That's an interesting world view. I can't say I've had anyone argue this way.

>It's a component of the Eurozone. In that system the ECB is the government.

Greece doesn't have a government?

>All countries issue currency as spending because that's how banking works - even if they settle up into something else by the end of the day. Intraday banking can't work any other way.

I don't follow sorry. Could you explain this a little more in depth?

>Politicians are elected so they are entitled to spend what they can get past the legislature - and nobody else should be able to stop them. Otherwise we don't live in a democracy.

The Greek socialists who caused their current predicament absolutely had every right to do what they did.

>You don't need Revenue and taxation. Taxes for revenue is an obsolete concept as Beardsley Ruml pointed out in the 1940s.

Honestly have't seen any of you MMT folks in over a year.

>As is the idea of fractional banking systems. They don't exist. Loans create deposits, and always have. As the Bank of England explained very clearly in 2014.

They don't exist? Just like Greece isn't a country?

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