Apart from enjoying a superlatively temperate climate, Greece is also a beautiful country.
But those are not the reasons I am thinking of. Mine are operational.
I will give you three good reasons.
1) Greece's unemployment benefits are a ridiculous 360 Euro, and offered for one year only. Hell of a deal considering that other countries index these same benefits on the last salary...
As an extra bonus, unemployed have no medical cover after the first year in unemployment -- this is offered as a bonus.
2) Social security contributions and retirement benefits. This is beautiful: SS contributions are indexed to the salary and run at around 45% total for medical & retirement.
But the pension you actually get has a ceiling which is conveniently low (i.e. below the average salary in 2010).
This one is difficult to match!
3) The Public Sector in Greece pays less than half the SS contributions as compared to the private sector.
Forget about matching that!
So, Greece is a cheap country to run... where else do you get these bonuses and more: the lowest education expenditure in the EU, poor medical services, and no complaints and most turn to private schooling & medicare.
So, Greece should be a cheap country to run....if it were not for the immoderate, frenetic public spending, the alleged corruption , and the dogged refusal of politicians to reduce the largest collection of administrative civil servants
In the words of a Turkish diplomat in Budapest Hungary many years ago,
"Greece is a country with a population of intelligent people set back by 100,000 idiotic politicians and their friends who are ruling. Turkey is the opposite, and that is why, in the end, Turkey will go forward."
He was right.
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Wednesday 10 October 2012
The German Chancellor in Athens amidst demonstrations: a charade?
So Athens hits the headlines, yesterday!
The Prime Minister ("Chancellor") of Germany, Ms Angela Merkel, visited Athens as the first stop of her rould of struggling euro-economies.
The lady affirmed her personal and official support for all Greece's efforts and offered kudos to the government for its efforts (she meant future efforts, no doubt; nothing has been done yet). So, why visit Athens? Probably to make a PR point to the other europartners and the world at large.
Of course there were demonstrations: the usual ubiquitous and vociferous civil servants' union (adedy) and the national laborers union (gsee) flexing their muscles. All of a few hundred people gathered to protest.
Of course the media and union noises and good at focusing the Public's attention to the bad German woman rather
than the the good fellas running the country for the past 30 years.
The good fellas are all Greek.
Merkel is German, and a bad German makes better copy.
The Germans are also not known for their sense of humor making them excellent fall guys too. As a British comedian once said (paraphrasing), "Iran has one comedian -- that's 3 more than in Germany!".
The rest of the population seethed quietly and tried to go on with their lives as best they could. Which was not very good as security measures bordered on the ridiculous in Athens (main streets cut off to all traffic including pedestrians, police flown in from other cities to guard the lady, etc)
Germany, that foots the largest part of Greece's bail-out bill, is the country responsible for the second world war and a number of other things that include Porsche and Mercedes autos particularly popular in Greece of late. It is also seen as the reason behind the austerity measures imposed on everyone. So Germany is a good scapegoat.
Germany also owes Greece a loan, contracted (by force) during the occupation in 1943. That should cover part of the country's debt, were the country's politicians to ask for it. Amazingly, no one has.
But then, Greece's politicians are known to sign documents in the name of their country, without even reading said documents.
The absurd issue ion all of this shenanigan is that Greece contracted and created its debt all by itself. Of course its erstwhile, now dead, socialist politician Mr A. Papandreou helped increase debt by allegedly bestowing loan money to his cronies and by increasing Greece's overall Public Sector payroll, by a factor of 2. Aslo EU support funds went, purportedly, to cover deficits and party needs. For sure, little money went to infrastructure; and much -- i.e. the majority it is said -- was spent on private construction and consumer products and services.
So it's not really the Germans' fault that Greece still has not balanced its budget imbalances -- even after all the money and the austerity.
Greek governments doggedly insist on keeping their huge contingent of administrators intact (twice the percentage of the EU average which includes Greece).
The Greek parliamentarians have two highly paid consultants, eac bringing the de facto Parliamentto 900 people.
Not even the US President has it so good!
The Prime Minister ("Chancellor") of Germany, Ms Angela Merkel, visited Athens as the first stop of her rould of struggling euro-economies.
The lady affirmed her personal and official support for all Greece's efforts and offered kudos to the government for its efforts (she meant future efforts, no doubt; nothing has been done yet). So, why visit Athens? Probably to make a PR point to the other europartners and the world at large.
Of course there were demonstrations: the usual ubiquitous and vociferous civil servants' union (adedy) and the national laborers union (gsee) flexing their muscles. All of a few hundred people gathered to protest.
 |
| Merkel left, as requested, but the debt remains. |
The good fellas are all Greek.
Merkel is German, and a bad German makes better copy.
The Germans are also not known for their sense of humor making them excellent fall guys too. As a British comedian once said (paraphrasing), "Iran has one comedian -- that's 3 more than in Germany!".
The rest of the population seethed quietly and tried to go on with their lives as best they could. Which was not very good as security measures bordered on the ridiculous in Athens (main streets cut off to all traffic including pedestrians, police flown in from other cities to guard the lady, etc)
Germany, that foots the largest part of Greece's bail-out bill, is the country responsible for the second world war and a number of other things that include Porsche and Mercedes autos particularly popular in Greece of late. It is also seen as the reason behind the austerity measures imposed on everyone. So Germany is a good scapegoat.
Germany also owes Greece a loan, contracted (by force) during the occupation in 1943. That should cover part of the country's debt, were the country's politicians to ask for it. Amazingly, no one has.
But then, Greece's politicians are known to sign documents in the name of their country, without even reading said documents.
The absurd issue ion all of this shenanigan is that Greece contracted and created its debt all by itself. Of course its erstwhile, now dead, socialist politician Mr A. Papandreou helped increase debt by allegedly bestowing loan money to his cronies and by increasing Greece's overall Public Sector payroll, by a factor of 2. Aslo EU support funds went, purportedly, to cover deficits and party needs. For sure, little money went to infrastructure; and much -- i.e. the majority it is said -- was spent on private construction and consumer products and services.
So it's not really the Germans' fault that Greece still has not balanced its budget imbalances -- even after all the money and the austerity.
Greek governments doggedly insist on keeping their huge contingent of administrators intact (twice the percentage of the EU average which includes Greece).
The Greek parliamentarians have two highly paid consultants, eac bringing the de facto Parliamentto 900 people.
Not even the US President has it so good!
Wednesday 3 October 2012
Greece is easy to save: simply ignore unions and politicians
If that could be done, then the representatives of Greece's bail-out coalition commonly called "the Troika" (there are three) could have already achieved what three successive governments still have not... All the Greek governments have definitively achieved in this time is to lower the pensions and base salaries in the public sector (but there is overtime to make up for lost income). "This time" is, three years down the line and some euro 150 billion down the drain: the Greek governments have next to zero to show for it.
* Liberate closed professions: some talk, no action.
* Reduce civil service payroll: nothing. If anything there have been a few new hires of cronies. Thankfully, only a few.
* Clamp down on tax evasion: nothing.
* Clamp down on corruption: nothing
* Free access to amployment: nothing -- if anything more restrictive
* Allow Private Agency employment: on the contrary, it has been restricted.
On the other hand,
Accumulated debt to the private sector has topped Euro 7.0 billion.
Greece in labor ball park figures (source Ministry of Labour, Hellenic Statistics):
Total employable 4.80 mill
Total unemployed 1.25 mil
Total black
employment 1.63 mil
Total Public Sector
& nationalized corps1.21 mil
Total above 4.09 mil, i.e. in Greece there are officially just under one million people legally employed in the private sector. These people are called upon to create wealth and contribute to welfare funds & taxes.
As an American youth would put it, "yeah right".
Gentlemen, it's not worth it.Either pack it in or take over. The guys in power can't do it.
Now we're wasting everybody's money.
* Liberate closed professions: some talk, no action.
* Reduce civil service payroll: nothing. If anything there have been a few new hires of cronies. Thankfully, only a few.
* Clamp down on tax evasion: nothing.
* Clamp down on corruption: nothing
* Free access to amployment: nothing -- if anything more restrictive
* Allow Private Agency employment: on the contrary, it has been restricted.
On the other hand,
Accumulated debt to the private sector has topped Euro 7.0 billion.
Greece in labor ball park figures (source Ministry of Labour, Hellenic Statistics):
Total employable 4.80 mill
Total unemployed 1.25 mil
Total black
employment 1.63 mil
Total Public Sector
& nationalized corps1.21 mil
Total above 4.09 mil, i.e. in Greece there are officially just under one million people legally employed in the private sector. These people are called upon to create wealth and contribute to welfare funds & taxes.
As an American youth would put it, "yeah right".
Gentlemen, it's not worth it.Either pack it in or take over. The guys in power can't do it.
Now we're wasting everybody's money.
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