Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Greek's are going through a metaphorical full-body surgery right now. Everything hurts right now, but all necessary evils.
I would say public broadcasting is one of the first things to get axed outside of emergency messaging.
Captain Crunch: I heard 60-80 % of Greeks commit tax evasion of varying degrees.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Yeah, I know it was a ludicrous number in terms of evaders, which is funny considering that a lot of them probably work for the government
I was trying to look it up, but from 2011 to last year it was illegal to fire a civil servant.it was actually written into their constitution. so basically you could show up for work, masturbate on a cat 5 hours a day while leering at a co-workers boobies and you couldn't be fired.
A cop was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing a kid and he's still getting paid while he sits in prison.
Suppossedly the plan is to tie a can to the tail of 15,000 civil servants by the end of next year. And to force 1,400 civil servants who have broken the law or been imprisoned to quit.
The Greece civil service numbers about 750,000 people. to put this into perspective they have a population of 11 million people with a something like a third or so under a working age.
Now to put that into perspective, Canada has a population of 34 million and a federal government payroll of about 268,000.
And we're incredibly bloated and inefficient.
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All true. No disputing these facts. However…
The alleged solution delayed the facing of these facts. In the process of delaying these realities, skimmed off billions of dollars to the Eurozone banks, mostly German and French. Prolonging the status quo, delaying the inevitable, making the inevitable much worse than if faced three or five years ago, certain favored entities getting paid billions in the process.
To extend your metaphor, total body surgery. The surgeons, getting well paid. Unfortunately, the disease is sepsis; bacterial infection of the blood. Surgery is 100% useless; the proper treatment (antibiotics/exit from the currency union and return to the drachma) would've been painful, but effective. Now, it will be painful, and ineffective. And the organs that are still good (tv stations, electrical utilities, other infrastructure) sold off for pennies to the same class of surgeons.
The proper medicine should've been swallowed years ago. Now it is too late. This sequence is being repeated in many other nations, including the United States of America.