Greece: the consequence of no regulation and irresponsibility
When you think of Greece, you think of the birth place of Olympic Games, the classics, the great Greek mythology, Apollo, Zeus, etc. Today, Greece shows no trace of its ancient glories.
Instead, Greece today has become the land of forced austerity, bankruptcy, threatened sovereign default, violent riot, fire, clashes with police, massive use of tear gas. The nation is caught by violent riots, madness of rage, ecstasy of looting, red-hot excitement of burning, popular uprising, like an uncontrolled wild fire in the dry autumn west.
The austerity measures have been demanded by the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) as a condition for handing over the second bailout fund. The Greek politicians have approved a bill on austerity measures.
Among others, the austerity includes: cuts to public sector pay and pensions, reduced benefits and increased taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol, raised the retirement age by two years, imposed public sector pay cuts and applied tough new tax evasion regulations. including a 22% reduction in the minimum wage and 150,000 public sector job losses by 2016.
One young man expresses the sentiment of his generation when he talks to an elder person, “It’s your generation that brought us to this point, but it’s mine that has to pay for it. You have to take responsibility for what’s happening here.” It sounds so familiar when I think of the cost of two Bush wars and the burden on the future generation.
Now Greece is tasting the bitter fruit of its years of cheating and spending on borrowed money and the reduced taxing. Indeed, Greece used deception to join the euro in the first place. Next, mistakes were further made when countries broke the “stability and growth pact,” that is, an annual budget deficit no higher than 3% of GDP. In fact, Germany took the lead in breaking this rule. Greece has never followed it at all. It kept on borrowing, spending, and cheating all the way until it was uncovered two years ago.
Looking at the large picture, we first see the unavoidable consequence of uncontrolled debt-supported spending. Next we see something happen in all countries. That is, every time, politicians together with corporations and bankers have created this gigantic financial trouble for the country, it is the common people who have to pay for the price.
No wonder Greek people protest so vehemently.
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Pappy Jeanneret
3 months agoThe common people need to quit electing politicians and leaders who don’t control spending and debt. The common people need to understand that retirement at age 50 or 55 is just a little ridiculous. The common people need to come to grips with the fact that out of control wages, benefits and pensions need to be scaled backed. There were and are a lot of people, including the common people on the gravy train in Greece. The question we need to ask ourselves is ” Can we learn from their mistakes”.
“The Big Fat Greek Gravy Train: A special investigation into the EU-funded culture of greed, tax evasion and scandalous waste”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2007949/The-Big-Fat-Greek-Gravy-Train-A-special-investigation-EU-funded-culture-greed-tax-evasion-scandalous-waste.html
George Hunsucker
Northland
3 months agoGreece is merely another example of a failed liberal state. high govt. employment, unsustainable pensions & benefits, the welfare state, uncompetitive private sector.
And last but certainly not least, an entitled mentality.
Kent Mueller
3 months agoPlease put these things into perspective. Absolutely no perspective is given in this column. Raising the retirement age? Hairdressers and radio announcers, among many others retire at age 50 with a pension of 95% of their last year’s income…for life.
It’s very poor journalism to throw out a number like that without putting it into context, especially when the readers’ experience (American in this case) would naturally assume a much older retirement age, such as what we experience.
The same thing goes with reduction of government employee wages. In Greece they are much higher, average, than their private sector wages.
Please put things into context so that you don’t deceive with numbers.
Chuck Close
3 months agoThe writer brings up genuine concerns for the outlandish spending and unconscionably irresponsible legislating that we now find our selves responsible for and burdened with.
In the writer’s world it is the two “Bush wars” that mark and scar our fabric and represent the problem.
It is THAT absurd attribution that marks and scars our polarized political landscape. First….they are not the “Bush wars.” They are the Iraq and Afghan wars and were both voted on by our congress.
Second…. there is no question that Bush was a profligate spender and that the GOP congressional pukes in the 107th, 108th and 109th congesses irrationally spent as though they were democrats.
Still, to blithely even discuss the cathartic problem we face without even mentioning Obama and the 110th, 111th and 112th congresses as the “double down on dumb” promoters of fiscal irresponsibility is irrationally biased.
Both wars and all of the debt accumulated during Bush’s 8 years amount to about half of what the current democrat pukes have amassed since Obama’s inauguration.
As the flashing neon sign to their intransigence and irresponsibility, the US Senate has failed to pass a budget in over 1000 days.
As social commentator and cultural gadfly, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in the title of his bestselling book, we are there….at the “Tipping Point.”
It furthers nothing to assess blame or to pretend that we are anywhere other than at that tipping point.
The left would have us believe that we have no problem that more spending will not solve. The right would have us believe that a “penny not spent is a penny well spent.”
Neither of those two positions should be given any real consideration…..yet we are led to believe by the dolts in the media and the political elites that those are the only two choices we have.
While there is no argument that spending must be reigned in, our politicos continue to argue about what constitutes “spending”.
My lone conclusion offered here is that it is now unarguable that the European socialist model is mired in the proof of failure. To continue down any path of emulation of that model is deserving of no attention.
Mark Hastert
3 months agoRight, left or otherwise our problem seems to boil down to everybody wants, but nobody wants to pay. Bush wanted to throw a couple of wars on the cheap so he kept the accounting off the books so we all wouldn’t start asking questions. Dems want social programs but are reluctant to get the funding sufficient to pay for them. Rich folks want their taxes reduced with promises that “down the road” prosperity will pay for them then “down the road” that want to lower their taxes again. We need to decide as a nation what we want and commit to paying for it and if we’re not willing to pay for it do without.