- Greece based their economy on vacations, which require it be both cheap and fun. When oil prices rose plane tickets got expensive at the same time that northerners lost the easy money to pay for them so it lost visitors and the rates to keep places open rose, making it expensive, so even fewer people came. Riots and protests and high 28% unemployment have wrecked the fun part too.
- Greeks believe theirs is the premiere culture because stone buildings from 2200 years ago are everywhere and a history major at the free university can lead to a job as a tour guide if you're also a linguist. Following the crash, most linguists have fled Greece for the country that speaks their second language. Those left behind in an economy without tourists have little to offer the world.
- Greece leads the world in income tax cheating. According to Greek records few people admit to owning swimming pools because they are taxed, however aerial photos show most Greek homes have them.
- Greece has crappy soil, destroyed by those same ancients that built all the marble. This is a big part of why they're so warlike, and why so many are fishermen. You go to sea, as a culture, when you can't make a living on land. Thus Greece's agriculture is mostly olives rather than food to feed its population. Olives are not a high profit export, but they do live on very low inputs and the worst soil on Earth, even bare rock, will support olive trees. Greek families wanting to grow vegetables for the table use raised beds and intensive cultivation, but this is subsistence level, not suited for sale or income. Greece can't really feed itself, much less its cities or export food for hard currency.
There are several things about the situation in Greece that were wrong to begin with. Ze Germanz should not have been loaning money to the Greeks, ever. They should not have been bailed out by the German govt and voters and tax payers when those loans went bad. That was pure corruption, right there. And Angela Merkel, German PM, took huge campaign contributions from those same corrupt bankers. She should be impeached and jailed for a thousand years. And the bankers shot. The German tax payers should NOT be bailing out these bad loans, and those loan enforcers should not be threatening the perpetually broke Greeks with seizing national assets to pay off the bad debt, things like the Acropolis. The German bankers knew the Greeks were a bad risk. Duh! Austerity to the point of mass starvation in Greece is not sensible.
There are solutions to Greece, however. Nobody seems to want to talk about them for fear of pointing out Angela Merkel is a crook and those bankers are crooks. Greece can't pay the debt. Not conventionally. They do need investment in basic resources, like soil to grow crops, and more linguists and engineers because when was the last time a Greek was famous for engineering something? 2000 years ago, that's when. That's a long dry spell. And it shouldn't be like that. Is being an engineer just not a good enough job in Greece? Is pride there so shallow nobody bothers? Or is the pay so low if you get the degree, you leave because staying there means you do nothing and get paid the same as the waiter serving your soup? That's the trouble with Socialist countries, after all. There's no upside to working hard. The current US president should be reminded of that, daily, by someone he'll listen to.
Greece isn't famous for cars, but should be. They've got twisty roads. Why are the British and Germans and Italians and even the French producing decent cars, but the Greeks and Spanish not bothering? The Greek engineers should be building cars and sailboats for the coming Peak Oil fishing and cargo fleets and exporting streetcars like nobody's business because there will be huge demand for them in the USA in about 2-5 years. The USA has one (1) streetcar manufacturer with thirteen (13) employees up in Oregon. That's it. For the whole nation. Every city needs a streetcar manufacturer. Same with Europe. They're going to need more. Between streetcars and scooters, they'll be able to keep their economies on the move the next time Russia shuts down the natural gas pipeline in February, again, just to drive up the price and show how important they are to Western Europe. Stuff like that makes me more supportive of Frac(k)ing despite its environmental contamination damages.
As for the debt in Greece, they're going to accept default. Its coming. All attempts to bail them out are stupidly doomed and just throwing good money after bad. Only after default, and Greece returning to their own currency and probably famine, will they have a chance to rebuild their economy and reputation, something Brazil did in the same position decades ago, and Argentina has been doing since 2000, when its economy collapsed and Benetton was exporting food from the country while people in the cities starved. Benetton is on my list of companies to avoid doing business with, by the way. In the real world, you need a certain amount of poverty to motivate people with an idea to do something about it. Trying to get rid of poverty by dragging everyone else down into it too (FDR, LBJ, Clinton) just makes people sit on their ideas and watch everyone else suffer. Why struggle harder for less money and no compensation? That's the trap of Socialism, and that's the real reason Greece is pretty screwed. There's no advantage to trying harder as long as you live there. Those who want a better life, leave. And the Brain Drain will continue until the nation, and its voters, give up fair and equal poverty and stop punishing excellence.
And that gets to my final point here. Greece is a possible outcome for American Socialism, which the current govt strongly espouses like its a religion and they've got the Fever. Socialized medicine with a massive number of aging Baby Boomers means huge medical costs. And the way to deal with costs is regulation. Any socialist will tell you that. Tell the doctors what you'll allow them to make for wages. That will teach them (not to study medicine). This has already happened to the wonder drug industry. I worked in that. Most biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies shut down operations shortly after Obama announced cuts to drug prices under his mandate. Since he announced he would socialize/nationalize medicine, that was it for them. Boom, done. Those companies still operating are basically coasting, not investing, just keeping up a false front of "operations" rather than actual R&D. Mandating costs, what a private company can charge for its products, is the real message here, and Obama has scared off investment. He's also scared off employers from hiring people so the economy is lagging badly. Threatening capitalism is a bad way to manage an economy.
The Greeks can't seem to get the message, though some starvation will probably get the ball rolling. They've already had blackouts and had to pay for the oil to run their powerplants with GOLD (to Iran) because their currency is laughable. I wonder just how long before the images of starving Greeks, sitting in the dark and shivering, get grain donations and more scandals about who eats and who doesn't? That's what typically happens. Without that suffering, the Greeks won't give up their Socialism, and they'll still think that marches and protests will fix the underlying problems of Greece. Will America need starvation and blackouts to get the same message?
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