Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "The Plain Bagel" channel.

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  6. It's actually even worse than that. Every step of the way, Greece was forced to promise to do something eminently sensible in return for the next bailout, and every step of the way, Greece dragged its feet, refused to implement part of the deal or even tore down something that had already been implemented. An example is the way unemployment benefits works (or worked -- I'm not up to date with the situation). The old system required people to show receipts for their expenditures which they would then get reimbursed for. This is an extremely slow and inefficient process (but it requires lots of public sector workers!) and it doesn't let poor people manage their money wisely, for example by saving up for bigger expenses (that could even be investments in a better future) and it gives no incentive to poor people to find cheaper alternatives. So it is not a good option for the people on unemployment benefits and it is expensive. But on the other hand, it means the ruling party can find lots of jobs for people who are friendly to the party. And those people also have a chance to be nice to people they know (or somebody else with the right guanxi knows) and less nice to people they don't like. Early on, Greece was forced by the EU to implement a small scale experiment where people just got a lump sum every month, just like they do in Northern Europe. It's cheap, fast, efficient, provides better incentives for the recipients, and makes it harder to cheat the tax payers. One of the first things Syriza did was to scrap the experiment. There are many, many more examples like that.
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