Here are a few insights into this so called blame free ordinary person of Greece from that article:
- The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. - The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece?s rail passengers into taxicabs: it?s still true. - The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as ?arduous? is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. - Oddly enough, the financiers in Greece remain more or less beyond reproach. They never ceased to be anything but sleepy old commercial bankers. Virtually alone among Europe?s bankers, they did not buy U.S. subprime-backed bonds, or leverage themselves to the hilt, or pay themselves huge sums of money. The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government?where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn?t sink the country. The country sank the banks. - ?The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets.? - He just took it for granted that I knew that the only Greeks who paid their taxes were the ones who could not avoid doing so?the salaried employees of corporations, who had their taxes withheld from their paychecks. The vast economy of self-employed workers?everyone from doctors to the guys who ran the kiosks that sold the International Herald Tribune?cheated (one big reason why Greece has the highest percentage of self-employed workers of any European country).
It wasn't banks that did this to Greece. The Country stole from the banks.
It wasn't corporations that did this. As corporations they had the most scrutiny of anyone in the country and were the only one's that would be punished for tax evasion, hence most corporations paid taxes and ensured their employees paid taxes.
It was the people of Greece and the Governments they continually elected.
