21–30 of 117 posts
They turned themselves into a different country by borrowing Euros at German market interest rates while their previous interest rates for borrowing were at 16% before they joined the Eurozone. They lived way above their means for more than 10 years, what did they expect for a country that has virtually no industry?
I guess Greece will find an equilibrium at a lower income per capita.
> She wants to abolish Greek clientelism. Although every politician has promised this since taking office, none has succeeded. For centuries, the Greek administration was little more than an excuse for legal nepotism. Clientelism was the functional principle of society. Its roots reach into the Ottoman era, when clan leaders represented the Greeks to the Ottoman authorities, and they have continued to this day. Jobs…
Most large corporations are like that and so are Western governments.
'Getting in the door' at an entry-level job in government or even in business ... there are rules here, and tech tends to be more 'skills based' as are startups. But after that you'd be surprised how many people have the jobs just because they think they deserve them.
Clearly, an illiterate person is not going to be the Director of whatever, but someone who is intelligent, a good communicator and politically suave can go very far.
It's probably much worse in Greece, and every Greek person I know has left.
The EU may be about as good for Greece as the USA is to West Viginia - sure, you may be protected and have a low-baseline standard of living, but you're going to get kind of wiped out and never recover because nobody will stay, and nobody will invest.
In these Federations, the winners are the established economic powers. Smaller that are really, really responsible (i.e. Montana, Dakotas, or Sweden and Switzerland in EU) and hold their own. Otherwise the power slips away.
Greece and Portugal are becoming retirement homes the size of nations.
I'm from Romania, a poorer member of the EU that faces an even greater demographic crisis. You don't hear a peep about us in the news, except for recently, when the corrupt government started beating up protestors who were asking for stronger anti-corruption measures.
Anyway, from a slightly less salty perspective: it's a real shame what happened in Greece. I think Greece and Argentina may be the only developed countries which lost the status. Hopefully Greece bounces back but I think they'd need a big mentality change (their is awfully close to ours from what I've seen).
>There is almost no work -- the main sources of income are beekeeping and a bit of forestry. There's no tourism, even though, according to UNESCO, the air here is cleaner than almost anywhere else in Europe. One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for…
The same could be said of the 10K small villages in America, or billion in the rest of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Liberalism itself isn't right wing at all. Consider that in the USA at the moment liberalism is most concentrated within the democratic party as most neo-liberals have left the party post Trump. Steve Schmidt and Joe Scarborough are two obvious examples of this shift.
Just because the US Democratic party is associated with economic liberalism doesnt mean it isnt right-wing.
The article is mystifyingly optimistic about the prospects for the reform of government. Only lawyers can resist reform better than government employees. And then there's the digital revolution in government. If examples elsewhere are a guide, there's huge potential there for a screw up as well. Although I have heard that Estonia has managed it well. Maybe it should be them rather than the French they should be getti…
So when the gears go out of sync, the real world just finds ways to pretend to match the requirements - keeping the change drivers happy- while going on with life as close to normal as possible.
>It's surprising because economic liberalism doesn't have any deep roots in Greece. There is no liberal party. The Greeks traditionally think in terms of left and right. A) There is a liberal party in Greece (just as much as there is a liberal party in Germany or France), the people just don't vote for it. B) Liberalism and "laissez-faire thinking" are right wing, I can't see another way of thinking about that. I am…
Liberalism itself isn't right wing at all. Consider that in the USA at the moment liberalism is most concentrated within the democratic party as most neo-liberals have left the party post Trump. Steve Schmidt and Joe Scarborough are two obvious examples of this shift.
>There is almost no work -- the main sources of income are beekeeping and a bit of forestry. There's no tourism, even though, according to UNESCO, the air here is cleaner than almost anywhere else in Europe. One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for…
In rural areas I think you have to start thinking more concretely about what "economy" means. With smaller populations things are much more micro than macro. One huge difference between rural and urban areas is that people are much more self sufficient, which makes economic numbers difficult to compare. For instance somebody with an income of $5,000 is generally going to be living a pretty miserable life in the city. On the other hand that can easily be more than enough to live extremely comfortably, even given comparable costs for what's purchased, in a rural area. And the reason is self sufficiency.
In a rural area that person likely already owns their home (80%+ home ownership in rural areas [1]) and activities come entertainment like hunting, fishing, and agriculture can provide immense amounts of resources. For instance just a single large whitetail deer can easily yield more than 100 pounds of edible meat. A single catfish and you're looking at 5-10 pounds of food, and so on. And the overhead costs there are completely negligible. The hunting license costs way more than everything else combined (once you already have your guns, rods, tackle, etc). Get into things like raising chickens and pigs, and you literally will never have to pay a dime for food again if you don't want.
$5,000 ends up meaning very different things, even if we ignore localized inflation. It's just you don't need to buy as much. Of course the corollary there is that notions like "economy" start to mean different things. If people don't need, or want, to buy as much - then economic growth is not a very good indicator of how well a place is doing. We take the view that people must not only constantly want more, but also buy more, earn more, and spend more. Growth, growth, growth! What of people that are, "Nah - thanks, but I'm okay with what I have"? So now we stick a guy earning 6 figures into the middle of all of this. I'm not really sure his effect is going to be, but it seems a bit simplistic to simply immediately equate more money with success.
[1] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/...