Financial theory is not my strong point, so I won’t even try to explain the details behind the debt-ridden basket case that Greece has become, nor the intricacies behind the agreed-upon deal in which the Greeks have to pay more taxes and receive fewer government benefits in return for more borrowing.
Still, I do understand a chief cause of their problem, which is that practically everyone in Greece wants to retire early and live off of a government-subsidized pension. Unfortunately, when fewer people work and pay taxes, and more people collect government retirement payments, you have a budget-balancing problem.
Which becomes a big problem when the government facilitates it. Did you know that the Greek government allows trombone players to retire with a pension at age 50 because of possible work-related breathing problems? How about masseurs and masseuses? Constant exposure to heat and steam is deemed unhealthy, so they’re early-retirement eligible too. Hairdressers? C’mon, man, all the chemicals in the shampoos and dyes we rub into people’s hair! Even radio and television announcers can retire early because of the health risk of bacteria on microphones. All told, there are nearly 600 professions in the private sector in which the allowed retirement age is 50 for women and 55 for men.
And then there is the public sector where 8 percent of the pensioners retire between 26 (26!) and 50, 24 percent between 51 and 55, and nearly 44 percent between 56 and 61.
Thus the need to borrow more money from other nations, and the corresponding crisis in which those other nations decided that if the Greek government and people won’t agree to some fiscal discipline, future lending is problematic.
Speaking of the Greek government and people, another key to understanding how Greece got into this mess may be found in who the Greek people keep voting into office. This debt crisis has been the reality for years, yet the Greeks keep voting for Socialist governments, run by people who, being Socialists, are angry at the effrontery of lenders wanting their money repaid and are actually talking about retaliation. Three months ago, Greece’s foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, said that if Greece was denied further loans, with no strings attached, Greece would send Third-world migrants and radicalized jihadists to Germany, which holds more Greek debt than any other nation. Not to be out done, Greece’s justice minister, Nikos Paraskevopoulis, claimed to have discovered that Germany owes Greece reparations from World War II, which Germany must pay or he will begin confiscating German property in Greece.
Understandably, German government officials were not amused, especially since they recently raised Germany’s retirement age from 65 to 67 in order to keep government income balanced with government pension payouts.
