10 ms·

Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73

102 points by MaysonL 12y ago

grey-area 12y ago
The original article referred to here is this one, with the unfortunately esoteric title: Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemnity-of-1871-73/ http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemn... I really enjoyed reading this as it puts the Eurozone's current crisis in historical perspective. It dismisses the unhelpful rhetoric about financial probity which has come to dominate debates over Greek debt and which has obscured the real structural problems faced by a federal state which has monetary but not yet political union. One of his most important points was this: An awful lot of Europeans have understood the crisis primarily in terms of differences in national character, economic virtue, and as a moral struggle between prudence and irresponsibility. This interpretation is intuitively appealing but it is almost wholly incorrect, and because the cost of saving Europe is debt forgiveness, and Europe must decide if this is a cost worth paying (I think it is), to the extent that the European crisis is seen as a struggle between the prudent countries and the irresponsible countries, it is extremely unlikely that Europeans will be willing to pay the cost.
dang 12y ago
We changed the url to the original source instead of http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/06/2113951/michael-pettis-explains-the-euro-crisis-and-a-lot-of-other-things-too/ http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/06/2113951/michael-pettis..., which is a summary of it. It's a good summary, though. Both pieces are worth reading. In addition, since Varoufakis has been of interest to HN for a long time, some of you might like this interview that Pettis links to: http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-02/yanis-varoufakis-greece-finance-minister-eng http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-02/yanis-varoufakis-greec.... (The other articles that Pettis links to about Varoufakis' proposals are behind the FT paywall.)
lkrubner 12y ago
This is very good: "Third, it makes no sense to blame the recipients of the capital inflows for causing the crisis. If enough money is sloshing around willing to invest in any stupid idea, you shouldn’t be too surprised that a lot of stupid ideas get funded. When, for example, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, says: "The reasons for Greece’s problems can be attributable only to Greece and not to actors outside the country, and certainly not in Germany." As he did during the press conference following his meeting with Yanis Varoufakis, his Greek counterpart, we have to remember that Schaeuble is talking nonsense. It’s logically impossible for excess borrowing to occur unless there is someone sufficiently reckless (or stupid) to provide the financing." And this is also good: "I am hesitant to introduce what may seem like class warfare, but if you separate those who benefitted the most from European policies before the crisis from those who befitted the least, and are now expected to pay the bulk of the adjustment costs, rather than posit a conflict between Germans and Spaniards, it might be far more accurate to posit a conflict between the business and financial elite on one side (along with EU officials) and workers and middle class savers on the other. This is a conflict among economic groups, in other words, and not a national conflict, although it is increasingly hard to prevent it from becoming a national conflict." The German government, in collusion with the German business establishment, has wrecked Europe, first through its irresponsible lending, and then, later, through the pressure it put on the ECB to raise rates despite the weak European economy. The German government can try to blame others for the problems in Europe, but the driving force behind all of these problems has been Germany. Germany had a trade deficit at the end of the 1990s, and they wanted to develop a trade surplus, and they did so through a series of irresponsible measures that have done great harm to Europe.
- nhstanley 12y ago
  When you think about it, Germany is like the hot girl in a small town high school. She doesn't care if she's pretty (rich) in the absolute sense, she only cares that she's prettier (richer) than all the other girls in the small town (Europe). Instead of focusing on optimizing Europe's collective wealth, they are trying to maximize their wealth relative to the rest. There is certainly concerns about things like corruption in the periphery, and Spain and Greece certainly had their inefficiencies, but Germany is going about fixing it in a completely wrong way.
- pastProlog 12y ago
  > The German government, in collusion with the German business establishment, has wrecked Europe, first through its irresponsible lending... I do agree that this sanctimonious moralizing of the virtues of the German over the Greek is risible. However, with common assumptions in place, what Germans did makes sense. Businesses had high productivity, lots of capital investment, and nowhere to send the excess of the commodities it could produce, the domestic market was satiated. So they lent money to the Greeks etc. and had a place to send these excess commodities for a few years. They kicked the can down the road so that they could figure out what to do with this overproduction and - today is the result. I see a worldwide self-reinforcing cycle for slow growth, unemployment, recession and depression. Companies have it over employees so money goes to profit more than wages. This happens eveywhere so money goes to capital, not consumption. But the more impoverished workers have no money to buy commodities. So a temporary solution is found - debt. Things go along again and then one day the game of musical chairs ends and you have a situation like now. Greek youth is not going to put up with a 65% unemployment rate forever, and the election of Syriza points to that. So does the rising number of votes going to Golden Dawn and the KKE. I see news commentators calling Syriza "far left" - they are not far left, they are just socialists. People are so used to soi disant socialist and labour parties performing neoliberal cuts when elected to government, the idea that a socialist politician wants a floor to living standards is a shock to them.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    > I see news commentators calling Syriza "far left" - they are not far left, they are just socialists. They do have a fairly strong far-left faction, which perhaps contributes to some of that perception. However I agree the party as such isn't, particularly the leadership that is actually in control of the party. Tsipras and his allies have fairly effectively sidelined the leftist faction over the past few years, in an attempt to turn the party into an electoral force that could win. The faction around Tsipras is inclined more towards a kind of pragmatic populist socialism, not a more hardline ideological leftism (Varoufakis is de facto in the Tsipras faction too, although I believe he's formally not even a member of Syriza).
rrggrr 12y ago
Michael Pettis is the Tony Stark of economics for those unaware. He has a scary accurate track record of predictive accuracy, he has influence in many central banks, perhaps most notably among Chinese decision-makers. Pettis has a rare accounting-based approach to classical economics which makes his analysis fresh, but also accessible to non-economists (me). That would be enought except Pettis, also a musician, owned the most successful music club in Beijing (D22), until he closed it at its peak. I have Elon Musk and Steve Jobs playing cards like everyone else, but my Michael Pettis and Vernon Walters cards are my most cherished.
atmosx 12y ago
What I don’t understand about the current stance of Brussels and Germany, is their distorted view of reality. Michael Pettis apparently and many others, view what Brussels and mainstream economic magazines fail to see. Take this excerpt from Buttonwood's article[1] in the “economist” on Feb 3rd.: — Yes, the Greek voters have given their opinion but what about voters in other democracies? German voters, when polled, seem pretty clear that they don't want Greece to be given debt forgiveness. Since they would bear the cost of a Greek write-off, why should their views count for nothing? And what about the Finns, Dutch, Austrians etc? — For some reason ‘Buttonwood’ ignores Podemos in Spain, UKIP in the UK, M5S in Italy and LePen in France. All these anti-EU parties are leading the polls in their respective countries. It’s not something that will happen in the future it is something that it IS happening NOW. The rhetoric has it that by punishing SYRIZA the current French, UK, Italian and Spanish governments can make a bad example out of Greece and reclaim lost votes. While to me seems a very unlikely outcome. No matter what will happen to Greece, LePen is going to win Frances election if Frances economy doesn’t change drastically in the next months. Same goes for Spain, Italy and the UK. The economy can not change following austerity prescription by the Germans unfortunately, that’s crystal-clear, so why are they sticking with austerity?!? I might be wrong, I don’t know time will tell, but I get the feeling that people in key-positions throughout EU right now are severely under-educated. The article was quite refreshing. Let’s hope for the best. 1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and-euro-crisis](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and-euro-crisis) http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and...
- justincormack 12y ago
  UKIP is not an anti austerity party, you should not mix them in, and the National Front in France should not be lumped in with Syriza and Podemos. Syriza is not really anti-EU, either. Nor is debt forgiveness a pro/anti EU issue, other than in the construction of the ECB.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    You're right, they shouldn't be mixed and SYRIZA is not really anti-EU. But UKIP and LePen are anti-EU while Podemos and SYRIZA will probably not comply with Brussels. All of them may be oppose to the EU (or EU's austerity policy) for different reason, however the fact that all these new parties are a product of the EU's choice of policy remains IMHO.
danmaz74 12y ago
There is something I completely missed in this piece: the distinction between public and private debt. For public debt, there is a single agent that decides: the Government, that is elected democratically. How does the "there is no Spain" argument apply to that?
- swatow 12y ago
  you are right. And the same applies in the other way. If most of the lenders are in Germany or some other country, of course they are going to be annoyed if Greece defaults. Unfortunately, the length and tone of the article are going to convince many people that the author was on to something.
mrwarn 12y ago
maybe the real problem is lack of grocery stores in places like Spain and Italy, http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores-around-the-world/ http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores... now admittedly this might have nothing to do with the current economic problems faced by the EU, but at least in some of those places they have plenty of places to grab a drink!
- psykovsky 12y ago
  You're not wrong, you know...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
markvdb 12y ago
The Greek _minimum_ wage is over 50% higher than my girlfriend's in EU and euro zone Latvia . How do I convince her of the need to participate in Greek debt relief?
- coldtea 12y ago
  By telling her that minumum (or median) wage is not the be all end all. Rate of economic development, cost of living and personal debt matters as do relative changes in wage levels. The minumum wage doesn't matter at all also, when you have ~40% youth unemployment and 27% general unemployment (so those people's wage is zero). If Americans, for example, started getting mass 40%-50% pay cut across the board, a huge amount of them would end in bankruptcy, small business closed, houses lost to unpaid loans, etc.
  - markvdb 12y ago
    The Latvians got that 5 years ago. GDP -26%, mass government layoffs, 30% paycuts for those that were left, housing prices -55%. Once the housing cost factored out (extreme heating bills, unlike at least most of southern Greece!), cost of basic necessities here is not so incredibly different from Western Europe. Youth unemployment was remedied by emigration.
- atmosx 12y ago
  Hello from Greece, the country of wealthy! A very good answer would be to ask her to come and live in Greece for two years, but to save her the shock... I will share a few sporadic thoughts. The official unemployment rate among youths (below 32 IIRC) it's 50.60% today. Given the fact that part time jobs like working as a delivery boy counts as employment for the prior government, you can rest assure that finding a steady salary in Greece these days is extremely hard. In the private sector almost no one is going to give you a full time job. If they do, you're expected to work at least 10 hours per day, maybe more, while you're officially paid for ~ 8. The local social security found takes a large cut of your salary ~ 30%. Then you are taxed. Last year taxes rose at incredible levels. People lost their houses because by governments math, if you owned a house at some remote location, mostly parent's heritage, theoretically you had a income even though you resulted as unemployed. This led to extremely tragic situations where people became homeless overnight. There are other taxes like these that add up to your electricity bill. Can you imagine living without electricity? What would you if you had to choose between having EUROs but not having electricity at home or having Drachmas and having electricity at home? Although in current Greece you pay a large amount of your income to social welfare state, that's totally inexistent. You have to double pay for your child's school, because he will never get into the University if he doesn't take extra (private) classes. You have to double pay for your health if a member of the family has a problem. Drugs became increasingly more expensive, although the prices of the actual drugs in many cases where slashed, because of added taxes at every drug prescription. In Greece we had ~ 7.000 suicides in the last 6 years. We became from last country in suicides, to first in the EU on average, within 6 years. [...] --- That's only the tip of the iceberg. Greece, is a third world country right now and the population is suffering. That's why a large % of the population doesn't care much about staying in the EUR or not. Also note that among the Greek population there's a feeling that Brussels and Germany is heavily corrupted[1]. Indeed the fact that Berlin and Brussels so openly support the governments and oligarchs who created the financial crisis in Greece instead of punishing them, says a lot IMHO about their real interests. Most of the bail-out money went to French and German banks who held Greek Bonds. So the private banks got away with high-yield Greek bonds while the Greek and German tax-payer had to pay the difference. --- Now that said, it's not like everything is Greece was okay. We have an extremely awful local elite who act as an oligarchy. Indeed Varoufakis refers to them as "Oligarchs", because that's what they are. In Greece we never had a justice estate. I don't know how are things in Latvia, might be better or worst I don't know, really I don't. Anyway Greece needs restructuring. It needs a wages alignment, but if anything, the average wage has to go up not down. --- In view of current events, are you sure that entering the monetary union, was a good move in the long run for Latvia? I mean Czech Republic didn't enter the EURO nor Switzerland. I see them both extremely happy that didn't. [1] https://anestis.quora.com/Links-to-credible-sources-about-Greek-euro-crisis https://anestis.quora.com/Links-to-credible-sources-about-Gr...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ta97531 12y ago
"People sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix it because they don't know how to fix themselves." "It is possible for individuals, and even for whole cultures, to care about the wrong things, which is to say that it's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering." I'm outraged. I was born in Greece to Greek parents and feel extremely unlucky about this, sort of being born in a completely third world country. The level that the Greeks (not all of them, but to an extraordinary extend) fail to comprehend reality is astonishing. The modus operandi here is "do whatever other people do around you". And what is that? Slowing drag your feet through education, which is laughable and teaches almost nothing of practical value, go out as much as you can, drink coffee for hours on end talking about crap every day, study "whatever you like" failing to understand that some (most!) university departments are terribly anachronistic and will lead to unemployment with certainty, etc, etc. It's a failure from top to bottom: parents and especially teachers are freeloader lazy people and this is exactly what they teach to the young, by every aspect of social interaction. I lost too many years of my life, trying to find out what's wrong with me, and eventually found out about Paul Graham, and startups, and ambition, dammit! I read a comment somewhere about the US/western Europe just nuking the place and felt so in tune with it. In fact, the people here are just unlucky, like me. They don't even comprehend what it means to work. They say stuff like "Greeks work more than Germans!" and they go to work 1 or 2 hours late and talk for hours about last night's football match. Empirical data towards a proof of what I'm saying: I was saying those stuff to a sibling of mine, and they were hating me, as most people do here. But then, they moved to a Western European country, and after several years of trying to adjust, they now tell me that they themselves regard the Greeks to be lazy whining freeloaders. I apologize for the rant. My question is this: Why the German government, and Western European countries more advanced and with better "culture" in general, doesn't try to help Greeks become more like them, starting from education? Is it because of politics, or is it that this might be happening already, but to see actual results you have to wait a very long time?

102 points by MaysonL 12y ago

The original article referred to here is this one, with the unfortunately esoteric title: Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemnity-of-1871-73/ http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemn... I really enjoyed reading this as it puts the Eurozone's current crisis in historical perspective. It dismisses the unhelpful rhetoric about financial probity which has come to dominate debates over Greek debt and which has obscured the real structural problems faced by a federal state which has monetary but not yet political union. One of his most important points was this: An awful lot of Europeans have understood the crisis primarily in terms of differences in national character, economic virtue, and as a moral struggle between prudence and irresponsibility. This interpretation is intuitively appealing but it is almost wholly incorrect, and because the cost of saving Europe is debt forgiveness, and Europe must decide if this is a cost worth paying (I think it is), to the extent that the European crisis is seen as a struggle between the prudent countries and the irresponsible countries, it is extremely unlikely that Europeans will be willing to pay the cost.

dang 12y ago

We changed the url to the original source instead of http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/06/2113951/michael-pettis-explains-the-euro-crisis-and-a-lot-of-other-things-too/ http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/02/06/2113951/michael-pettis..., which is a summary of it. It's a good summary, though. Both pieces are worth reading. In addition, since Varoufakis has been of interest to HN for a long time, some of you might like this interview that Pettis links to: http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-02/yanis-varoufakis-greece-finance-minister-eng http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-02/yanis-varoufakis-greec.... (The other articles that Pettis links to about Varoufakis' proposals are behind the FT paywall.)

lkrubner 12y ago

This is very good: "Third, it makes no sense to blame the recipients of the capital inflows for causing the crisis. If enough money is sloshing around willing to invest in any stupid idea, you shouldn’t be too surprised that a lot of stupid ideas get funded. When, for example, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, says: "The reasons for Greece’s problems can be attributable only to Greece and not to actors outside the country, and certainly not in Germany." As he did during the press conference following his meeting with Yanis Varoufakis, his Greek counterpart, we have to remember that Schaeuble is talking nonsense. It’s logically impossible for excess borrowing to occur unless there is someone sufficiently reckless (or stupid) to provide the financing." And this is also good: "I am hesitant to introduce what may seem like class warfare, but if you separate those who benefitted the most from European policies before the crisis from those who befitted the least, and are now expected to pay the bulk of the adjustment costs, rather than posit a conflict between Germans and Spaniards, it might be far more accurate to posit a conflict between the business and financial elite on one side (along with EU officials) and workers and middle class savers on the other. This is a conflict among economic groups, in other words, and not a national conflict, although it is increasingly hard to prevent it from becoming a national conflict." The German government, in collusion with the German business establishment, has wrecked Europe, first through its irresponsible lending, and then, later, through the pressure it put on the ECB to raise rates despite the weak European economy. The German government can try to blame others for the problems in Europe, but the driving force behind all of these problems has been Germany. Germany had a trade deficit at the end of the 1990s, and they wanted to develop a trade surplus, and they did so through a series of irresponsible measures that have done great harm to Europe.

nhstanley 12y ago
When you think about it, Germany is like the hot girl in a small town high school. She doesn't care if she's pretty (rich) in the absolute sense, she only cares that she's prettier (richer) than all the other girls in the small town (Europe). Instead of focusing on optimizing Europe's collective wealth, they are trying to maximize their wealth relative to the rest. There is certainly concerns about things like corruption in the periphery, and Spain and Greece certainly had their inefficiencies, but Germany is going about fixing it in a completely wrong way.
pastProlog 12y ago
> The German government, in collusion with the German business establishment, has wrecked Europe, first through its irresponsible lending... I do agree that this sanctimonious moralizing of the virtues of the German over the Greek is risible. However, with common assumptions in place, what Germans did makes sense. Businesses had high productivity, lots of capital investment, and nowhere to send the excess of the commodities it could produce, the domestic market was satiated. So they lent money to the Greeks etc. and had a place to send these excess commodities for a few years. They kicked the can down the road so that they could figure out what to do with this overproduction and - today is the result. I see a worldwide self-reinforcing cycle for slow growth, unemployment, recession and depression. Companies have it over employees so money goes to profit more than wages. This happens eveywhere so money goes to capital, not consumption. But the more impoverished workers have no money to buy commodities. So a temporary solution is found - debt. Things go along again and then one day the game of musical chairs ends and you have a situation like now. Greek youth is not going to put up with a 65% unemployment rate forever, and the election of Syriza points to that. So does the rising number of votes going to Golden Dawn and the KKE. I see news commentators calling Syriza "far left" - they are not far left, they are just socialists. People are so used to soi disant socialist and labour parties performing neoliberal cuts when elected to government, the idea that a socialist politician wants a floor to living standards is a shock to them.
- _delirium 12y ago
  > I see news commentators calling Syriza "far left" - they are not far left, they are just socialists. They do have a fairly strong far-left faction, which perhaps contributes to some of that perception. However I agree the party as such isn't, particularly the leadership that is actually in control of the party. Tsipras and his allies have fairly effectively sidelined the leftist faction over the past few years, in an attempt to turn the party into an electoral force that could win. The faction around Tsipras is inclined more towards a kind of pragmatic populist socialism, not a more hardline ideological leftism (Varoufakis is de facto in the Tsipras faction too, although I believe he's formally not even a member of Syriza).

rrggrr 12y ago

Michael Pettis is the Tony Stark of economics for those unaware. He has a scary accurate track record of predictive accuracy, he has influence in many central banks, perhaps most notably among Chinese decision-makers. Pettis has a rare accounting-based approach to classical economics which makes his analysis fresh, but also accessible to non-economists (me). That would be enought except Pettis, also a musician, owned the most successful music club in Beijing (D22), until he closed it at its peak. I have Elon Musk and Steve Jobs playing cards like everyone else, but my Michael Pettis and Vernon Walters cards are my most cherished.

atmosx 12y ago

What I don’t understand about the current stance of Brussels and Germany, is their distorted view of reality. Michael Pettis apparently and many others, view what Brussels and mainstream economic magazines fail to see. Take this excerpt from Buttonwood's article[1] in the “economist” on Feb 3rd.: — Yes, the Greek voters have given their opinion but what about voters in other democracies? German voters, when polled, seem pretty clear that they don't want Greece to be given debt forgiveness. Since they would bear the cost of a Greek write-off, why should their views count for nothing? And what about the Finns, Dutch, Austrians etc? — For some reason ‘Buttonwood’ ignores Podemos in Spain, UKIP in the UK, M5S in Italy and LePen in France. All these anti-EU parties are leading the polls in their respective countries. It’s not something that will happen in the future it is something that it IS happening NOW. The rhetoric has it that by punishing SYRIZA the current French, UK, Italian and Spanish governments can make a bad example out of Greece and reclaim lost votes. While to me seems a very unlikely outcome. No matter what will happen to Greece, LePen is going to win Frances election if Frances economy doesn’t change drastically in the next months. Same goes for Spain, Italy and the UK. The economy can not change following austerity prescription by the Germans unfortunately, that’s crystal-clear, so why are they sticking with austerity?!? I might be wrong, I don’t know time will tell, but I get the feeling that people in key-positions throughout EU right now are severely under-educated. The article was quite refreshing. Let’s hope for the best. 1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and-euro-crisis](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and-euro-crisis) http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/greece-and...

justincormack 12y ago
UKIP is not an anti austerity party, you should not mix them in, and the National Front in France should not be lumped in with Syriza and Podemos. Syriza is not really anti-EU, either. Nor is debt forgiveness a pro/anti EU issue, other than in the construction of the ECB.
- atmosx 12y ago
  You're right, they shouldn't be mixed and SYRIZA is not really anti-EU. But UKIP and LePen are anti-EU while Podemos and SYRIZA will probably not comply with Brussels. All of them may be oppose to the EU (or EU's austerity policy) for different reason, however the fact that all these new parties are a product of the EU's choice of policy remains IMHO.

danmaz74 12y ago

There is something I completely missed in this piece: the distinction between public and private debt. For public debt, there is a single agent that decides: the Government, that is elected democratically. How does the "there is no Spain" argument apply to that?

swatow 12y ago
you are right. And the same applies in the other way. If most of the lenders are in Germany or some other country, of course they are going to be annoyed if Greece defaults. Unfortunately, the length and tone of the article are going to convince many people that the author was on to something.

mrwarn 12y ago

maybe the real problem is lack of grocery stores in places like Spain and Italy, http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores-around-the-world/ http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores... now admittedly this might have nothing to do with the current economic problems faced by the EU, but at least in some of those places they have plenty of places to grab a drink!

psykovsky 12y ago
You're not wrong, you know...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

markvdb 12y ago

The Greek _minimum_ wage is over 50% higher than my girlfriend's in EU and euro zone Latvia . How do I convince her of the need to participate in Greek debt relief?

coldtea 12y ago
By telling her that minumum (or median) wage is not the be all end all. Rate of economic development, cost of living and personal debt matters as do relative changes in wage levels. The minumum wage doesn't matter at all also, when you have ~40% youth unemployment and 27% general unemployment (so those people's wage is zero). If Americans, for example, started getting mass 40%-50% pay cut across the board, a huge amount of them would end in bankruptcy, small business closed, houses lost to unpaid loans, etc.
- markvdb 12y ago
  The Latvians got that 5 years ago. GDP -26%, mass government layoffs, 30% paycuts for those that were left, housing prices -55%. Once the housing cost factored out (extreme heating bills, unlike at least most of southern Greece!), cost of basic necessities here is not so incredibly different from Western Europe. Youth unemployment was remedied by emigration.
atmosx 12y ago
Hello from Greece, the country of wealthy! A very good answer would be to ask her to come and live in Greece for two years, but to save her the shock... I will share a few sporadic thoughts. The official unemployment rate among youths (below 32 IIRC) it's 50.60% today. Given the fact that part time jobs like working as a delivery boy counts as employment for the prior government, you can rest assure that finding a steady salary in Greece these days is extremely hard. In the private sector almost no one is going to give you a full time job. If they do, you're expected to work at least 10 hours per day, maybe more, while you're officially paid for ~ 8. The local social security found takes a large cut of your salary ~ 30%. Then you are taxed. Last year taxes rose at incredible levels. People lost their houses because by governments math, if you owned a house at some remote location, mostly parent's heritage, theoretically you had a income even though you resulted as unemployed. This led to extremely tragic situations where people became homeless overnight. There are other taxes like these that add up to your electricity bill. Can you imagine living without electricity? What would you if you had to choose between having EUROs but not having electricity at home or having Drachmas and having electricity at home? Although in current Greece you pay a large amount of your income to social welfare state, that's totally inexistent. You have to double pay for your child's school, because he will never get into the University if he doesn't take extra (private) classes. You have to double pay for your health if a member of the family has a problem. Drugs became increasingly more expensive, although the prices of the actual drugs in many cases where slashed, because of added taxes at every drug prescription. In Greece we had ~ 7.000 suicides in the last 6 years. We became from last country in suicides, to first in the EU on average, within 6 years. [...] --- That's only the tip of the iceberg. Greece, is a third world country right now and the population is suffering. That's why a large % of the population doesn't care much about staying in the EUR or not. Also note that among the Greek population there's a feeling that Brussels and Germany is heavily corrupted[1]. Indeed the fact that Berlin and Brussels so openly support the governments and oligarchs who created the financial crisis in Greece instead of punishing them, says a lot IMHO about their real interests. Most of the bail-out money went to French and German banks who held Greek Bonds. So the private banks got away with high-yield Greek bonds while the Greek and German tax-payer had to pay the difference. --- Now that said, it's not like everything is Greece was okay. We have an extremely awful local elite who act as an oligarchy. Indeed Varoufakis refers to them as "Oligarchs", because that's what they are. In Greece we never had a justice estate. I don't know how are things in Latvia, might be better or worst I don't know, really I don't. Anyway Greece needs restructuring. It needs a wages alignment, but if anything, the average wage has to go up not down. --- In view of current events, are you sure that entering the monetary union, was a good move in the long run for Latvia? I mean Czech Republic didn't enter the EURO nor Switzerland. I see them both extremely happy that didn't. [1] https://anestis.quora.com/Links-to-credible-sources-about-Greek-euro-crisis https://anestis.quora.com/Links-to-credible-sources-about-Gr...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ta97531 12y ago

"People sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix it because they don't know how to fix themselves." "It is possible for individuals, and even for whole cultures, to care about the wrong things, which is to say that it's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering." I'm outraged. I was born in Greece to Greek parents and feel extremely unlucky about this, sort of being born in a completely third world country. The level that the Greeks (not all of them, but to an extraordinary extend) fail to comprehend reality is astonishing. The modus operandi here is "do whatever other people do around you". And what is that? Slowing drag your feet through education, which is laughable and teaches almost nothing of practical value, go out as much as you can, drink coffee for hours on end talking about crap every day, study "whatever you like" failing to understand that some (most!) university departments are terribly anachronistic and will lead to unemployment with certainty, etc, etc. It's a failure from top to bottom: parents and especially teachers are freeloader lazy people and this is exactly what they teach to the young, by every aspect of social interaction. I lost too many years of my life, trying to find out what's wrong with me, and eventually found out about Paul Graham, and startups, and ambition, dammit! I read a comment somewhere about the US/western Europe just nuking the place and felt so in tune with it. In fact, the people here are just unlucky, like me. They don't even comprehend what it means to work. They say stuff like "Greeks work more than Germans!" and they go to work 1 or 2 hours late and talk for hours about last night's football match. Empirical data towards a proof of what I'm saying: I was saying those stuff to a sibling of mine, and they were hating me, as most people do here. But then, they moved to a Western European country, and after several years of trying to adjust, they now tell me that they themselves regard the Greeks to be lazy whining freeloaders. I apologize for the rant. My question is this: Why the German government, and Western European countries more advanced and with better "culture" in general, doesn't try to help Greeks become more like them, starting from education? Is it because of politics, or is it that this might be happening already, but to see actual results you have to wait a very long time?