6 feb 2015

Squeezing








In their last elections, Greeks, as someone pointed out, didn't vote to switch their country for a different one. They only voted to change the Government of the country. Those compromises, those agreements signed by former democratically elected Greek Government obliges the next party ruling the country. Pacta sunt servanda

Greece's economic policy..... I mean.......some examples I found out in a 2011 article.

Greek public railways employees average salary exceeded 66,000 euros a year. And this includes cleaners and other low-skilled workers. The Athens subway collected about 90 million in tickets every twelve months, while its total cost was more than 500 million per year. About 600 different professionals were able to get retirement at the age of 55 or 60, getting 96% of their final salary as their pension. Hairdressers, waiters, musicians, radio broadcasters or massage therapist are among those jobs considered high risk to health. Less than 5,000 Greek taxpayers, in a 12 million population, admited incomes of more than 100,000 euros a year (in Spain , with 45 million inhabitants, there are about 200,000 contributors at this level). Greece found 40,000 cases of Pension Fraud.

The public railway company earn 100 million euros per year. In return ,spends 400 million in wages and $ 300 million in other expenses http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/business/global/21rail.html?_r=0


"Tens of thousands of unmarried or divorced daughters of civil servants collect their dead parents' pensions, weighing on a social security system experts say will collapse in 15 years unless it is overhauled" http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/28/greece-waste-idUSLDE63R0QZ20100428 This one is worth a read

In Athens just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools. Tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02evasion.html?pagewanted=all
It is not a matter of "squeezing" anybody, but to expect people meet compromises freely accepted. Economic growth? No at all, it seems they've been happily spending other's people money.

What is unacceptable, IMHO, is that the debtor seeks to change previous agreements to impose its new conditions on the creditor against its will, while at the same time he pulls back those meassures adopted in order to guaranted that the debt would be paid and at the same time he is also asking for more loans.......

"Yes I know my debt is 175% of my GDP, I don't know how I'm gonna pay you back or even if I'm gonna do it. On the other hand, I want you to know that I'm gonna rehire fired civil servants, I'm gonna cancel public companies privatisation, I'm gonna introduce a big rise in the minimum wage and please, don't forget I need you to loan me more money."

The Greek debt to Spain is 26 billion euros. That was our economic share to rescue the Greek economy. 66 billions to Germany. 49 billions to France. 43 billions to Italy

You've got problems to pay us back? OK, don't worry, let's have a talk about it, but make no mistake, you are not in position to make demands and what is out of any question is that Greek population is gonna suffer hard times just because of their politicians freely elected by themselves.

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario

Moto