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Over time, government entities develop the sectors of their economy, for which they create a light tax regime.
In Greece for example. international ocean liner activity is exempt from taxes and we end up with the largest merchant fleet on the planet. Additionally, church property is not taxed and nearly a third of the country’s real estate is owned by the church.
In the present century, the development of technology will be decisive for the power of countries.
Serious developed countries like the United States are bringing private investments with a mythical capital of 50 billion dollars to develop microprocessor manufacturing factories so that they will no longer be dependent on Taiwan in the future.
Cyprus has already set for some years a tax rate on profits from commercial activity in Artificial Intelligence at 1.5% or 2%.
China is running a $100 billion program to develop artificial intelligence for the next 5 years.
Here in Greece, we have 22% taxation on any profit, plus 100% withholding tax, plus 40% contributions to engineer salaries, plus 24% VAT on artificial intelligence products.
The Athena program envisages an investment of 150 million euros in the creation of a public research center on AI over the next five years, in order to bring together Greek minds (with knowledge of AI) in the public sector. .
What do you think will happen in the next decade? Will we be ahead or behind the others?
As a country, the next time a government is formed, political leaders should meet and agree on the basic principles of a national program for the development of technology in the real economy, not with subsidies and donations to high-tech and artificial intelligence companies, but with a fruitful tax regime for the development of the activity over time. At yesterday’s DEFEA, I met Greeks (young guys) who build specialized neural networks from scratch, train them with normal and synthetic data that they develop themselves, and even make applications of augmented reality with AI that shows a soldier’s special glasses which threats are present in his field of vision, which weapons, which have fallen to the ground (possibly injured) and which possible enemy soldiers. The applications are endless, depending on the data you will use for training.
I can’t imagine how we all agreed that mobile phone purchases from businesses would be VAT exempt, banking brokerage services would be VAT exempt, but AI products would have 24% VAT and 26% tax plus 100% initial tax. Something is wrong!
The Cypriots (Greek brothers from the Big Island) solved this years ago…
Debate
Just looking at the aftermath, yesterday’s debate undoubtedly shows that the Greek political establishment is not only unwilling, but also unable to cooperate.
Also, beyond any doubt, we have seen that the Simple and indolent Analogy, in a political environment like ours, can only be perceived as a sabotage of Democracy:
– The organizers and followers of Simple Analogy intended to plunge the country into a spiral of anarchy, because “if they do not govern, the fire will burn them all!” and it looks like they will succeed.
The above makes the call for New Democracy autonomy even more imperative, which is IMPOSSIBLE to achieve in the May 21 elections.
Kyriakos invokes the defensive reflexes of the few normal people who want this electoral competition not to harm the country economically and geopolitically, in order to give meaning to the vote on Sunday 21/5.
Unfortunately, given the possibility of forming a special government to immediately finalize the proportional and the absence of government that we saw yesterday, it is certain that the people we saw yesterday will try to create a permanent inversion of 200 votes to usher us into a decade – and possibly more – of political instability.
The only way to avoid anarchy and political instability is for ND to get 100+1 SMP seats, almost 34% from Sunday 5/21, for there to be next elections which will produce a government.
The odds of finding over 34% of sane voters on 5/21, who realized from the statements of political leaders of the opposition parties during yesterday’s debate that we are headed for a collision with a wall at 300 km/h, are up for you.
However, I am not completely optimistic…
Justice
In a conversation I had with Konstantinos Kyranakis (ND MP in Athens South Sector) after my previous post”The Last Soviet Union“, on the difficulty of the functioning of Justice, pointed out to me an important point which had escaped me and can very quickly change the facts: the sewing and the codification of the provisions of the laws which are currently scattered and the abolition of the old laws unenforceable.
As he explained to me, much of the backlog in the administration of justice in Greece is due to the disorder of Greek laws, which could be corrected in a few months by an initiative to collect and codify the whole legal body of the country.
I can say that he convinced me after several explanations, although the decisive thing in our conversation was his thought that it might be more efficient to have a specialization in judges so that they do not have no one to judge the family, the other business disputes and the next criminal. He is much more optimistic than me about the future of Greek justice.
I hope he is right.
However, he sought it.
I will follow with interest any initiative he takes in this area during the next legislature, after the formation of the government.
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