Quote:
Originally Posted by Cappy
Lets face it, governments are weak, spineless, opportunists with zero forethought into the future. Political parties seek election at all costs and will not make the tough choices unless the people are willing to sacrifice. It's up to the people to realize that things need to change and vote for that change, othwerwise governments will continue to pass the buck or blame some minority for all the problems (rich immigrants, poor immigrants, welfare recipients, elderly, corporations, the rich, etc).
I see alot of parallels to the recent Alberta election (obviously both are completely different). The parties knew that reliance on oil revenues needs to end and paid it lip service. Every party knew taxes would need to increase, and we voted in the party that offers democratic socialism hoping for the Nordic-model, only to realize that the nordic model has everyone pitching in (high income taxes, fairly low corporate taxes) so we end up with a tax on the rich and on corporations. While they were lambasted for the comment, I think Prentice was right in saying we all needed to look into the mirror (even the PCs).
The Greeks need to do the same, look in the mirror. Yeah some political parties put you in this mess but you voted those parties in and now need to face the consequences of poor choices.
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The issues with the Greece populace are extreme.
The stats are absurd. The latest stats have 24.3% of all Greek GDP being made up of under the table work, that taxes are not paid on. On top of that you have 27% of the populace employed in the public sector. So you've got a system where a huge section of the population is "self-employed" and not paying taxes and another huge section of the population that is employed by the government, who receives their money from tax revenue. Add an almost universal pension on top of that, and there simply is no way to make that work.
Instead of allowing a sensible political party come in and make the necessary difficult moves, the population votes for leftist and neo-nazi parties.
It makes my head hurt.
Edit: unemployment is also at 25%. So basically, only a small part of the populace is employed in the private sector and paying taxes.