-
The Rotting Fruit of Multiculturalism
December 22, 2009 | 73 comments
The Public Policy
The Good Life, Greek Style
You maybe thought Greece was reformable?
Back in the 1980s, pop singer Belinda Carlisle topped the charts singing that heaven was in fact a place on Earth. Prophets are often ahead of their time, and notoriously underappreciated in their own land. But Miss Carlisle ended up being proved right. Heaven is indeed a place on Earth. It is called Greece.
It is possible, amid the recent footage of riots, tear gas, burning buildings, and pepper spray, to get the wrong idea. But if you have lived and worked there over recent decades, you know Greece is the only place to be. You are one of the blessed, a lotus-eater, a dweller in the happy isles.
Let’s say that you’re in your fifties, and have worked for 30-odd years in one of the world’s toughest professions — something sweat-inducing, a real ball-buster — on the front lines defending civilization as we know it. Hairdressing, for instance. If every weekday since leaving coiffure school you have been in the salon, providing first aid to split ends and sun-damaged hair, then from the age of 50 you could put your feet up. The state would support you for the rest of your natural life. And it’s not just hairdressers who enjoy this privilege.
Other hazardous occupations that the Greek government decided deserved decades in retirement clover included street peddling, radio broadcasting, and nightclub singing. I don’t doubt those nightclub crowds in a seaside resort like Faliraki can be tough, but why should belting out the hits to sunburned tourists for 35 years single you out for four or five decades of the good life on a full state pension? The answer is that you’re not singled out. Nearly 600 jobs are similarly rewarded by the Greek authorities. Pastry chefs and trombone players are also deemed at risk, the former from breathing all that flour dust, the latter from gastric reflux. Radio announcers are considered to be vulnerable to microphone bacteria, while the toilers in Greece’s hair salons deserve compensation for handling the lethal chemicals used in hair products.
It all makes Greece sound like a mighty dangerous place. Except that it’s not. It’s wonderful. Life expectancy is higher than in many other European countries, including Denmark and Great Britain. The average retirement age nationwide last year was 61, compared to 65 in Britain and 67 in Germany and Holland. What’s more, when they do retire, Greek citizens can expect to receive 80 percent of their final salary — not average or median, but final. So Greek retirees can live the rest of their lives in the manner to which they most recently became accustomed.
In Greece recently I took the opportunity to hang around with the locals. It was a mind-altering experience. The government’s first round of so-called “austerity measures” was going through, but hadn’t made any palpable difference to the high life. It wasn’t just the easy talk of yachts and holidays I heard, but the everyday talk of endless entitlements. Civil servants employed to begin work at 9:30 in the morning and finish at 2:30 in the afternoon don’t pick up the phone after 2 o’clock. And even this is not as onerous as it sounds. Because these civil servants don’t actually have to be at work at 9:30. In fact there is a bonus scheme rewarding those who actually do turn up on time. And after that optional early start, the lunch break is certainly deserved. It’s all a foretaste of the civil service early retirement package.
The more you listen and the more you look into it, the more it becomes clear that Greece is a social first, the fulfillment of an elemental human dream: the Greeks have created a country with no consequences. When they entered the eurozone they simply lied, concealing the truth of their woeful financial situation from Eurocrats too excited about extending their base to bother with due diligence on the cooked Greek books. When, at the end of this year, Greek debt hits 160 percent of its GDP, it will still have almost no impact on the majority of Greeks. Having had one bailout already from the European Union, they now await another.
Since being saved from the precipice of financial catastrophe, the Greek government has finally been forced to rein in some of its worst excesses. So it has finally stopped paying final-status pensions at the rate of 14 months a year. That’s right: state pensions counted 14 months in a year, or rather two months a year which acted as double months — special pensioner bonus months. But even that’s assuming you’re one of the four out of 10 Greek citizens who actually pay any income tax. Considerably more than half the population find the whole tax business beneath them, or claim to be beneath it. So alongside the virtual and unreal real economy is a shadow, unreal, unofficial economy. And perhaps it’s this that keeps the whole party boat afloat.
BUT WHATEVER the reason: this is the place. The weather is beautiful. The scenery is magnificent, and if you’re one of those smart Greeks who have found a way to live the high life at the expense of others, then there’s nowhere better in the world.
The country is often talked about by doom-mongers as a foretaste, a warning, of what could happen to Spain, Italy, Britain — even America. But the truth is that as cautionary tales go, it’s not very scary. Because anyone who actually tries the Greek life will love it and do anything to get a piece of it. What is happening in Greece is the culmination of the European welfare dream.
As if to prove it, the United Nations’ independent expert on foreign debt and human rights just consoled the dreamers by warning the Greek government that its belated austerity measures may be impermissible. The “basic human rights” of the Greek populace must be protected, said Cephas Lumina, particularly “their economic, social and cultural rights.” The reality suspension seems endless. It’s not only a basic right to live the high life — it’s against your human rights to be denied it.
Heaven is a place on earth where you get to spend not only beyond your own means, but beyond the means of all your neighbors as well. You run up tabs you’ll never pay. And then you do it again. It is a country where no failure — either governmental or personal — is punished. And when the money runs out, it doesn’t. There are simply new ways to invent more. And on it goes. And nothing has consequences. The money grows on foreign trees. The party rolls on. And nobody will permit the music to stop. Because if it does then the lights will come up. And the aging Greek nightclub singer won’t be the only one looking ugly in the ensuing glare.
About the Author
Douglas Murray is a British writer and commentator. He was the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion from 2007 until 2011, and is currently an associate director of the Henry Jackson Society.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (60) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Douglas Murray
More Articles From The Public Policy
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/23/the-good-life-greek-style
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The Continuing Crisis
- A President Loses His Power
- We Have Her Example
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Darin| 9.23.11 @ 6:49AM
Until reality rears its ugly head and the people being forced to actually PAY for this decide it's not fair and refuse to continue paying. Then the wine-sipping lazy slugs hit the streets in rage demanding the rest of the world continue to be their slaves. Pathetic.
Old Soldier| 9.23.11 @ 7:22AM
I need to find some German suckers to pay for my villa and retirement.
Renard| 9.25.11 @ 12:23AM
Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. I'm an American sucker paying for my German (Berliner) wife's lifestyle and subsequent retirement!!
Swedishlady| 9.23.11 @ 7:23AM
Just recently I heard in the news here in Sweden that Greek hospitals were out of certain urgent medicine. This will affect among others cancer patients. The reason for this was that drug companies refused to deliver anymore as their bills were never paid since many years. How can this go on ? What kind of society is this ? Answer,a very corrupt society and corrupt societies are most often beyond help. These attitudes take generations to change. Thank heavens Sweden stayed out of the euro zone. I think that the Germans, instead of the Greeks, should go out on the streets and demonstrate and scream : we don´t want to support this country anymore.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 12:00PM
Simply put: Europe went secular. Secular nations don't value children. Europe, therefore, has below replacement birthrates---and this is combined with a welfare scheme state.
Welfare schemes are Ponzi setups that require more workers than retirees to support them. Muslims imported from Turkey, etc. will not cheerfully support European retired potheads. Europeans were too adolescent to raise kids, and now their welfare states are collapsing, weakest first.
I read America Alone when it came out, went to the CIA factbook and UN Demographic sutes, confirmed Steyn's numbers, and noted it extensively in MedScape under my real mname. My physician colleagues didn't believe me then. Now that their portfolios have been hit, I wonder what they think now.
King O bails out Greece, he can wave goodbye to re-election. The Greeks deserve nothing.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 12:04PM
sorry, "Demographic sites."
It is interesting to watch history unfold in a mathematically predictable fashion. Europe will become completely different and inimical to American interests by 2030, as it becomes Islamized. The Islamization of Europe is proceeding apace. Neither Gary Johnson nor Ron Paul have looked at these numbers, as foreign policy bores them.
An Islamized GB and France will have submarines with nuclear weapons. Do I think that those countries could hurt us real badly? Yes.
Anthony M| 9.24.11 @ 6:49PM
Excellent point, and to add to that, every person I've met from Britain says they expect a civil war in the next few years. I'm not encouraged that the Euro-Brits will win.
W| 9.24.11 @ 10:26PM
In a Demography class I had the professor explained that itt is a basic principle of demography that as a nation's economy improves people have fewer children. There are many reasons such as attending college post graduate, postponing having children while in school, the expense of having childre, and both spouses working. The average seems to be two children with three or four the exception.
Before with an agragrian economy it paid to have many children who could work and help the family. Now as everyone knows children are expensive, especially education.
Europe seems to have given up after the two world wars, nazism, communism, and is interested in six weeks of vacation, retirement at 55, and being taken care of by the nanny state.
We have to see if the Islamic populations will react the traditional way or keep having big families.
Audace| 9.25.11 @ 2:01PM
Yes, and as visual proof of this self-fixation, one sees people well into their 30's, 40's, and even 50's trying to dress hip and trendy. Just walking the streets.
Everyone knows that a serious budget buster is wasting hard earned money on "fashion." Rather pointless.
And so seems to be the mindset in all western nations and cultures. Self-focus. Note all the spas?
Just another manifestation of the pitfalls of ego.
Sure, it was and always will be most practical to have a lot of children in an agrarian situation. Cheap (home) labor! But it is also practical and wise to -- if one can and has the right spouse! -- procreate. Children keep us grounded. Keep us focused.
They may keep us monetarily poor, too. However, typically far richer in more meaningful, longlasting ways.
The dearth of offspring is a fundamental plank in modern liberalism.
Clint| 9.25.11 @ 10:41AM
Do Your Homework.
"With all the Progressive media spin, we don’t realize that the best way to support Israel is by not meddling in Israel’s internal affairs but to allow Israel to defend themselves however they see fit. Nobody understands this better than Congressman Ron Paul and that’s why Americans For Israel is proud to support this true Conservative."
The Tea Party Rebellion Is Here.
Seek| 9.26.11 @ 7:23PM
Secular nations don't have children? I take issue.
First, even "secular" nations have many religious persons living in them. Secularism refers to separation of religion and state (as it should be), not to the absence of religion itself. I've known many "selfish" non- and semi-religious people who have two or more kids.
Second, there are many intensely religious people who don't have any kids -- at least not yet. Catholic clergy and nuns are the most obvious example, but there are others.
Finally, if Europe, which is still far more densely populated than the U.S., really wants to avoid a demographic disaster, it would do better to keep out Muslims rather than engage in a futile game of childbearing one-upmanship that assures no winner in the end. Read my lips: No new Muslims!
Pecos Pete| 9.23.11 @ 7:34AM
How long will it be before King O bails out Greece?
Moe Blotz| 9.23.11 @ 8:03AM
He will not,unless he has a bundler or Arab buddy over there.
FastJohnny| 9.23.11 @ 8:35AM
Watch for China to pretty much just buy Greece. The birthplace of democracy has become the poster boy for a socialistic welfare state. How sad. So much for national pride, eh?
Audace| 9.23.11 @ 9:24AM
The new strategic home of Red China, smack dab in the center of the Med. Right at the crossroads of the Middle East and Europe. Right on NATO's southeast flank.
Swell.
Athens/Piraeus -- the new Singapore
Additionally: Those massive container ships and oil tankers chartered out of Greek shipping companies (because their standards are just a bit 'higher' than Liberia's). Oh, they'll now essentially be sailing the big commerce routes under Chinese flag.
Old Soldier| 9.23.11 @ 10:38AM
Sure Democracy was first tried in Greece. It also failed first their. The history of Athens wasn't an inspiration to the Founding Fathers - it was a warning. That is why they created a Republic more like the Roman model which took much longer to flame out.
Young| 1.28.12 @ 11:03PM
Perhaps, having a civilazation that's been around a little longer then the rest of us, the Greeks learned to live and let live. And why should they pay taxes, when the wealthiest in the world live among them, and pay nill?
I have NO idea why so many govorments across pond have let so many muslums become citizens without have assimilation into culture be a requirement? It seems France is now making a stab at this, as is Holland. The host countries gov. can be held responceble . I know that to be to true in US.
I myself would love to live in Greece, if for no other reason than the food is spectacular ! I found this article and comments interesting and helpful as I'm educating myself as best I can, on what the hell is going on here! thanks to one and all.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 2:37PM
As usual, the Moe is right on. No stooge, he.
Jim| 9.23.11 @ 8:09AM
My 2006 visit to Greece was ruined by civil servants. In a country that needs income, many of the tourist sites close at 2 pm. Bus loads of tourists ready to contribute to the local economy are turned away so the "workers" can enjoy their lifestyle. I've experienced Greece, and I won't be going back.
Audace| 9.23.11 @ 9:47AM
And it tests one's temerity as a savvy world traveller. One needs to be ready at the drop of a hat for strikes. This can impact your tight budget when city transit ceases -- for indeterminend lengths of time.
It can be far more than a city bus ride or short rail hop. If on one of those islands 1 - 2 hours away from home port and your ferry boat service strikes? And you have to be at the Athens airport in 7 hours?
Get ready to get creative real fast.
It's baffling. Right in the middle of peak traveling season, these "services" will strike. Greece tourism lives on its ferry services, and they are typically erratic -- due to service strikes.
Ask friends who have visited Greece in the last quarter century. Typically everyone has a harrowing strike story or two to share.
Darin| 9.23.11 @ 12:00PM
All the more reason to bypass Europe completely and spend your time/money in the good old US of A. Lots of cool stuff to see and do here, and you won't have to worry about currency conversion or international charges on your credit card.
tsd| 9.23.11 @ 8:09AM
I am on my way to pick up a one way ticket to Greece, sounds lovely. All you conservative war mongers can stay in the USA and fight the battle... I am moving on to the dark side.
Beau Blotz| 9.23.11 @ 8:51PM
Don't let the cabin door hit you in the tookus on your way out. No big loss.
play nice| 9.24.11 @ 2:05PM
geewiz Beau - - hook, line AND sinker?
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 2:38PM
Might want to check out Athens' airport safety rankings, TSD. Be sure to get nice and close to the Islamists, my friend.
Timothy L. Pennell| 9.23.11 @ 8:20AM
You call THAT, Heaven? Puleeeeeeeeeease.
How about a place where you can collect Unemployment, FOREVER? Or, at least until your Social Security kicks in.
And, how about a place where HALF of the population doesn't even HAVE to pay Taxes.
Mizz Warren claims that "It's not YOUR money. WE paid for everything".
By 'WE', I'm assuming that she means. those of us who WORK. Those of us who get up in the morning, work hard, start businesses that hire people, and, if we work hard enough, and succeed, become RICH.
Then, all of a sudden, 'WE' become the target of Mizz Warren, for not paying our Fair Share.
Is it Me?
Or is she a MARXIST POS that wouldn't think twice, about throwing every damn one of us, in to a GULAG, if she got the chance?
Greece has nothing on us.
UAS. USA. USA.
PolishKnight| 9.23.11 @ 9:40AM
Having worked in the IT industry, I spent a total of about 3 years on unemployment but split up over 4 times over 20 years. It's NOT enough to live on especially if one has a family or middle class responsibilities but it does help get one by for a bit until their next gig.
One has to respect the Democrat party for building a consortium of voters while the Republicans do their best to alienate theirs. I read that Romney loves H1B visas because supposedly without them, companies wouldn't have geniuses to invent the next facebook or solar panel and companies would all die. That's total BS. 95% of H1Bs are cheap, low-skilled labor from India and China chosen to undermine American wages in addition to fulfilling racial quotas.
I talked to these workers and most who get citizenship register to vote Democrat ASAP.
Clarityrising| 9.23.11 @ 9:18AM
(Sigh) Greece just hasn't been the same hard-working, industrious place since Alexander died. A long, slow decline. But hey! Uzo for everyone!
Only Republican at Woodstock| 9.24.11 @ 2:10AM
And the Greeks didn't consider Alexander a Greek (he's Macedonian) until after he was dead - for a long time. Of course being Macedonian may explain the high achiever profile. (Full disclosure - I am married to a Greek American who is throughly discussed with his ancestral home.)
play nice| 9.24.11 @ 4:19PM
just what do the Greeks do besides wash each other's laundry?
Audace| 9.23.11 @ 9:34AM
The world is really mad when Greeks and Greece dominate headlines for well over a year.
Mad = crazy, loco. As in "It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world."
Proof: Bailouts come courtesy of taxpayers fleeced without their knowledge and certainly without their approval.
Taxpayers who 1) work hard and cannot ever afford to take the time to visit Greece, 2) work hard and save their money, putting off vacations.
Aside from Greece's obvious strategic location and as a useful buffer between civilization and the uncivilized Mideast: Why do we care about a nation of just 10.2 million people?
Markets, banks, governments all in a fuss over 10 million people?
Let them fail.
This is like letting 2% of your population force the demise of the whole.
Who needs them? Push 'em aside like last week's rotting garbage.
Failure has consequences. Repopulate Greece with hardworking, thrifty, industrious northern Europeans. It would be a much better place with the Dutch, Swedes, and Norwegians running the place.
PolishKnight| 9.23.11 @ 9:44AM
I have never heard of "Dutch, Swedes, and Norwegians" being described as "hardworking, thrifty, industrious". Perhaps they are. My impression is that those countries were the dreamland of socialists here in the states and the endgoal of the Detroit they're currently creating here.
Audace| 9.23.11 @ 10:00AM
I sincerely ask: Have you not seen the differences between the working ports in Greek harbors and the harbors of these three northern European nations? Do you not know of amazing (and successful) land reclamation by the Dutch? Rotterdam is the world's top port for many good reasons. Norwegian ship captains are the top ranked in the world. Norwegian oil and drill platform technology and successes are the standard. Their seagoing rescue ships top. Maritime experts combined with modern technology. There is a ruggedness and resolve that traditional Scandinavians still possess.
Yes, the Dutch and Skandinavians have let slide far too many of their good Protestant Reformation ethics and behaviors. And they have let their politcal class run unchecked. But one still finds Dutch who live very basic, frugal, self-denying lives. Traces of the remnant is still there. It is a quiet, yes, dormant core.
There is nothing of merit to be found in typical Greek work culture.
Suffice it to say this: We would not be needing to talk about Greece bailouts and financial collapses if the Dutch, Norwegians, and Swedes were running Greece's cities and major businesses.
Seek| 9.23.11 @ 11:33AM
Greeks as "rotting garbage." Real swift. These are the people who gave us philosophy, democracy, drama, medicine, music, architecture and the Olympics. Cut them some slack. I have no Greek ancestry, but I know excellence when I see it, past or present.
Quartermaster| 9.23.11 @ 6:07PM
it's definitely in the past. Makes the present even more shameful because the criticism is accurate.
Howard| 9.23.11 @ 9:40AM
This describes the country Obama wishes for. Where only a few rich, stupid, schmucks pay taxes. And, if the ECB doesn't pony up enough to keep this lifestyle going, our dear egghead, Ben Beranke will surely print some money to help out our Greek friends.
Stefan Stackhouse| 9.23.11 @ 10:12AM
Of course, the fact that hardly anybody actually pays any taxes has a lot to do with it, too.
Bubba| 9.23.11 @ 11:10AM
Why are all the Greeks I know in America wealthy over achievers? Did all the hard working ones come here?
Darin| 9.23.11 @ 12:03PM
Yep. They were smart enough to know that all their hard work would gain them nothing at home, so they came to America when (at one time) you could keep what you earned and weren't villianized about it.
Moe Blotz| 9.23.11 @ 7:09PM
The Greek men who decided to stay in their homeland did so out of familial obligation in spite of opportunities in the new world. Those lads did not want to leave their brothers' behind.
Frank S| 9.23.11 @ 11:23AM
I wish I could state that Mr. Murray’s article was full of inaccuracies. He has summed up the Greek way of life accurately. What is missing in the article and the comments section is a lack of perspective. Even though born and raised in the U.S., I spent summers with family in Greece throughout my childhood and as an adult. Greeks like to tell stories, especially their own personal ones. Those stories are still filled with memories of war, civil strife, poverty, hunger and other assorted tragedies. There is also an extreme desire by the older generations to never allow their children to ever experience these things. That is why food is always plentiful when dining with Greeks. It seems to be a culture ever fearful of experiencing the sight of starving orphans in the streets again. Not an excuse, just some perspective. Americans have endured hardship and tragedy and become the stronger for it, but could the American culture endure intact over 360 years of occupation and subjugation followed by numerous civil wars, two world wars, then more civil strife and poverty? The Greece I grew up in during the 70’s, 80’s and 90s was a place and people wanting to enjoy a reprieve from their tragic history. Anyone that knew this about Greece when they adopted the Euro also knew what a mistake it was. If the Greeks had stayed with the drachma, a large portion of the baby boom era Greek Diaspora would now be spending their pensions in Greece enjoying a hard earned retirement – but that’s a different story.
Only Republican at Woodstock| 9.24.11 @ 2:21AM
I fully understand that Greece endured nearly 400 years of Ottoman occupation (as mentioned before, I am married to a Greek American) and other invasions. I have in-laws who risked their lives hiding Jewish children, passing one of them off as their own deceased son. But the fact remains that Irish had nearly 500 years of British oppression, and the Sicilians have been invaded and occupied by just about everyone except my grandmother's bridge club. The Greeks may want a holiday from history, but they can't have it. No one can.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 2:45PM
I think American culture could survive. Our Civil War was a bit more bloody than the Greek civil wars. We lost more men in our two World Wars. Then we bore the burden for the West's freedom for an ungrateful group of adolescents for 44 more years.
Audace| 9.25.11 @ 2:17PM
Frank, while I appreciate your comments (posted above), this is always the problem. Find -- somehow -- ways to blame one's present day lagging with "stories" and issues from the past.
If it is the recent past (five to fifteen years) then it has legitimate bearing on the present.
But occupations in Greece? Greece has been free and viable to set its own course since before VE Day in May 1945.
The Greeks are their own stupid problem. Surely then you remember from your many childhood visits the open cavorting with and indulgence with all things communist and Moscow-like in thinking and in policies in the 1970's and into the 1980's?
The anti US slogans everywhere. The dangerous bombings, and politically motivated kidnappings that became commonplace in the 80's.
Greece is a basket case of its own making.
Just ask one very real question: When markets, populations, and business opportunity all opened up in eastern European countries like Hungary, Czech, Poland, the Ukraine, and even Bulgaria and Romania in the early 1990's, why did so many well established, successful western European businesses move factories right away to those new (still very dodgy) locales?
The question for Greeks and Greece: Those same businesses were forever wary of any such expansion to Greece for the last quarter century. Businesss ventures are synonomous with risk. Why are all so risk averse -- for decades -- when it comes to Hellas?
Don't wallow in the past. That's passing the blame. Are the South Koreans wallowing in their past history? Singapore?
Richard| 9.23.11 @ 11:36AM
The problem with the leftist ideal of endless leisure is that someone must do the dirty work and the necessary work. Who is going to pick up the trash or fix broken bones?
Darin| 9.23.11 @ 12:04PM
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
- Margaret Thatcher
cicero| 9.23.11 @ 1:19PM
The simple solution for Greece, and all of the other PIIGS would be for the EU to simply let them default. However, this would leave their friends, the big bankers, holding an empty bag. They would be stuck with the consequences of a bad investment.
In adddition, no one else would then buy Greek bonds. This would cause the Greeks to live within their own income, rather than everybody elses. But don't look for that to happen. If the bankers were stuck with the consequences of their bad bets, they would not be able to live like royalty.
This is not the first time this has happened. Anybody remember the U.S. bailout of the Mexican government under Clinton? All we did ws ship them $40million of our tax dollars so that they could redeem the old bonds they had sold to the New York banks - and then sell more bonds.
In the middle ages, the bankiong houses would loan their money to the Kings to fight their wars. If the king could not pay back the money, the bankers were stuck, and didn't loan any more money to that king. Now, the bankers have no lessons to learn, because if the bonds are paid, they win, and if the bonds go into default, the taxpayers lose.
Arizona Bob| 9.23.11 @ 6:47PM
Great piece! Wow, what have we come to? But to be honest, I wonder how much the social compact the Europeans developed (and developed and developed...) is really the culprit in the current meltdown of the Western economies. What I mean is that up to a point, the welfare state -- as it was first proposed and put in place in Britain, as Mr. Murray can surely show us -- is compatible with a growth-oriented free economy. After all, it was, at least until -- well, until what? Until it got too fat, as this article implies? Or until free societies got too complacent and selfish? There's a difference. It's a subject worth pursuing. But thanks again for a good piece whose inadvertent humor reminds me of nothing so much as -- are you with me, Mr. M.? -- the classic "I'm All Right, Jack."
Hank Rearden| 9.23.11 @ 11:05PM
There is only one solution. Greece should declare war on the United States.
Only Republican at Woodstock| 9.24.11 @ 2:23AM
Someone send them a copy of "The Mouse That Roared".
Leroi| 9.23.11 @ 11:37PM
And let's point out, specifically with respect to the book review of today's issue:
"When they entered the eurozone they simply lied, concealing the truth of their woeful financial situation from Eurocrats too excited about extending their base to bother with due diligence on the cooked Greek books. "
It was The Goldman Sachs, now a bank, that helped the Grecians perpetrate this fraud.
D Roamer | 9.24.11 @ 2:47AM
Alexander the Great, certainly was not the Greek of today. I know , a lot of time has passed, but , just a thought.
Miguel Esteban| 9.24.11 @ 4:12AM
After reading this article you should asay there are two heavens on Earth, as it describes practicaly the identical situation we live in Spain.
Beer f.m.h.| 9.24.11 @ 7:32AM
Coming soon to the USA: My Big Fat Greek Welfare State.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 12:06PM
Not with a children per woman of 1.3. My small Greek state.
Paul Ashley| 9.24.11 @ 10:29AM
The European union of welfare states is a vast Ponzi scheme. The first to threaten default has its unsustainable liesurely (lazy?) life subsidized by the others. The last one standing loses.
Occam's Phaser| 9.24.11 @ 1:09PM
Yeah, yeah, taxes, overspending, corruption yadda yadda and so forth. The important thing is to talk about is, Greece is the only European country that should send for take-out food. Ghastly food for anyone not raised on McDonalds and Coke.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 2:43PM
I bow to your superior first hand knowledge, sir. (Love the steal)
That being said, the Lemon Chicken Soup at The Great Greek on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, I believe (the suburbs of LA meld into each other) is superb. The Greek Steak at the Bright Star Cafe in Bessemer, AL (a suburb of B'ham) is also superb. (I have no financial interest in either). But I have never visited Greece, and dislike plane travel now with a passion, so I gues I may never do so.
Margie| 9.24.11 @ 7:15PM
FLASH!!!
Drudge Reporting Herman Cain wins FL. straw poll!
Go Herman!
http://www.washingtontimes.com.....traw-poll/
k962| 9.26.11 @ 6:00AM
Listen to the progressives in this country and Greek society is their paradise. Gee only 4 of 10 pay income taxes. You mean just like here? Pensions killing the government? You mean just like here?