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.
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