Saturday, September 1, 2012

Spain hikes consumption tax to address deficit

Spain raises value-added tax by three percentage points to 21 percent as part of an effort to slash the public deficit....
The Organisation for Consumers and Users, or OCU, estimates the tax hike will increase the average family's spending by 470 euros a year....
Defaults on consumer and mortgage loans have soared in Spain, and evictions from homes have also jumped. Companies and the public sector have cut wages. The government does not expect an economic recovery to start until next year and job creation may still be several years off. 
AL Jazeera
Spaniards unhappy about rise in sales tax

More insanity.

12 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

ehThe beatings will continue until morale improves.

Anonymous said...

It's like these folks all have a perverse hatred of Keynes and do utterly stupid thing just to prove how much they hate him.

We're going to actively suppress aggregate demand - just to spite the damn Keynesians! Bwahhahaha!

Roger Erickson said...

Oh wow. Taxing 'em while they're down makes so much sense. That'll help 'em get up faster.

Do these people EVER look up from their spreadsheets, and look out their window at the real world?

Matt Franko said...

"18. From that year when Gnaeus and Publius Lentulus were consuls (18 Bc), when the taxes fell short, I gave out contributions of grain and money from my granary and patrimony, sometimes to 100,000 men, sometimes to many more.

Hmmmmm.... why didn't he just raise taxes????

http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html

rsp

ggm said...

You guys just don't get it. This is going to bring about amazing structural reforms which will eventually lead to a massive recovery. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. (/sarcasm)

Ryan Harris said...

Economic chemo-therapy

Anonymous said...

On the Poverty of New Keynesian Macroeconomics-Professor Lars Pålsson Syll-Malmö University-Sweden
2 September, 2012 at 12:15

http://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/on-the-poverty-of-new-keynesian-macroeconomics/

paul meli said...

Anonymous

This post by Lars is along the same lines as those that have been under discussion here recently via Roger Erickson, Tom Hickey and others in the local community.

The heterodoxees seem to be on the same page.

I wonder would marris and other critics that comment here think this post by Lars is not useful or that it has no real point?

Roger Erickson said...

After reading Krugman's quote in Lar's post, my first thought was

"good thing we don't let economists advise on the construction & operation of nuclear power plants"

Roger Erickson said...

ps: why do economists insist on saying things like "ceteris paribus" instead of "all things being equal?"

or "a fortiori" instead of "missing strenth?"

Roger Erickson said...

"Real world social systems are not governed by stable causal mechanisms or capacities."

Ya think? Only orthodox economists seem to think so. Is there an island somewhere where time & all other factors stand still? Can we just send them there ... so the rest of us can go back to surfing a dynamic, unpredictable reality, in real-time?

Roger Erickson said...

Quiggin, Lars & Keynes all seem to agree with my own assessment. There ARE no equilibria in cultures, nation states or any social species. Only dynamically adaptive systems following unpredictable survival paths.