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.
