I work with a Greek-American engineer who just came back from Greece last week. He tells me that the percentage of people who work for the government is over 50%, not 30% as is usually reported. The rest are ‘retired’ on pensions and you can ‘retire’ as early as age 50 in some cases. That cannot work for long, and is now causing the collapse. Somebody has to actually work in the private sector to pay taxes........
The situation is about the same as here. Close to half the population is heavily dependent on government. The government class retires at age 50+. The government class demands that the private sector pay for their lifestyle regardless of the state of the economy.
The story of the European financial crisis is like watching a bad sci-fi movie where a social parasite killed off all of the working people and now the parasites are eating each other. Unreal. A spooky, self imposed Atlas shrugged. I do not like this picture.
Indeed. I believe the Greek term for those is "tourists".
So what is the unemployment in Greece, currently ? Is it over twice that of the US ? Higher ? Seems like shades of the 30s. As bad as things have been here-and it does seem like they are finally getting somewhat better, and could really look up *when* we get Obama out-the situation is orders of magnitude more dire in Europe, and worst of all in East/Southeastern Europe. And unlike in the US, it isnt looking better even a little bit.