Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "The Plain Bagel"
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But huge debts during wars and times of existential crises are normal. What is not normal is that they persisted in Greece.
Denmark went bankrupt in 1813 (Napoleonic Wars) and the economy sucked for the next couple of decades and lots of poor people starved to death. Germany went through hell several times (Napoleonic Wars, 1848, WW1, Weimar, hyperinflation, the Nazis, the occupation). France had severe economic problems during its many, many expensive wars. The US had enormous debts after its tax revolt that went too far (their war of independence). Occasional huge debts and occasional state defaults are the norm, unfortunately.
I think a better answer is given by looking at the Greek constitution and comparing it with other European constitutions. When one does that, one is invariably struck by the extreme level of political mistrust codified in the Greek constitution. Part of that seems to be due to the unresolved tensions after the civil war, after which the Communists ended up entirely unpunished and entirely free to operate, vote, and own property.
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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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