i ve trawled all the news outlets so turn to the font of all knowledge. so there making or not making cuts .. but of what, what out of the ordinary spending do they go in for? is retiremnent age low, are social benifits high are public sector wages high? is the working week short? does everyone have peresonal debt, do they own or rent there homes.
what are they spending thier folding on?
it cant be on heating bills or foreign holidays is it all marble kitchens and swimming pools? as a casual holiday maker its always seemed a fairly impoverished place.
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what do the Greeks spend the money on?
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Posted 11 months ago #
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Olives and curly shoes?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Backhanders - they're whole system runs on them
Posted 11 months ago # -
Feta
Posted 11 months ago # -
terrible coffee and Ouzo?
Lots of them seem to sit about all day doing that at cafe's.
Any beaches going cheap there yet?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Most of the money is being stolen, same as in Ireland and Spain. I do business in Greece and it's more corrupt than Nigeria because you are usually dealing with employees rather than company owners, so most business contacts want a backhander. I really hate it.
Posted 11 months ago # -
I think they also have a greater proportion of tax evasion than any other European country too
A massive part of the economy is 'off the books'Posted 11 months ago # -
So, another fine example of a country who's regime was propped up by the CIA for several decades demonstrating libertarian principles?
Posted 11 months ago # -
The CIA has never been (or pretended to be) a libertarian organisation and it's more than 35 years since the junta terminated, so that's a bit like blaming Cameron's cutbacks on Harold Wilson, but whatever...
Pisspoor tax collection, highest military spending in EU (per cap), high social spending, inefficiency, corruption, massive and crappily-managed state-owned enterprises...
Posted 11 months ago # -
A bit like Spain then?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Mostly they spend it on food and rent, like the rest of us. In some places they spend it on Lexus 4x4 and Louis Vuitton bags.
For the foreseeable future they'll be spending their money on Goldman-Sachs executives' yachts.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Dungeon and Dragons, Computer and Comic books.
Oh sorry Greeks.
Posted 11 months ago # -
sixty fags a day and one of the lowest state retirement ages in the world
Posted 11 months ago # -
sixty fags a day and one of the lowest state retirement ages in the world
TBF, you would have thought the former would reduce the spending on the latter quite a bit.Posted 11 months ago # -
it cant be on heating bills....
You ever been Greece in the winter? It gets cold.
Posted 11 months ago # -
"What's a Greek urn?"
Posted 11 months ago # -
Is that a little Ern?
Posted 11 months ago # -
They spend it on flashy wallets and gold bling, hair gel and moustache cream and Momma.
They'll just get deeper into backhander territory as they fail yet again to bolster up an economy based on small market, no tax, micro economics.
I hate to say this, but I want at least one country to fail in the EuroZone, that doesn't mean Greece BTW, but I'd like to see the effects on the Euro economy.. Sounds bad that doesn;t it.. Sorry.
Posted 11 months ago # -
I believe they spend vast amounts of money on plates
Posted 11 months ago # -
Tsk.. such a lot of national stereotypes. Actually Greek living is quite spartan..
Posted 11 months ago # -
"What's a Greek urn?"
About three drachmas a week
Posted 11 months ago # -
They go through a fair amount of crockery!
Posted 11 months ago # -
Racist.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Retirement age is low, so its probably all going on benefits, interest and corruption
Posted 11 months ago # -
Cigarettes.
PS proper lol at GrahamS
Posted 11 months ago # -
Giant wooden horses
Posted 11 months ago # -
well its certainly not the sewage system.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Plates
EDIT: More seriously the state retirement age is 58 ish
Posted 11 months ago # -
same as us, a load of crap we don't need and will have to replace after a year when some **** tells us we need to
Posted 11 months ago # -
This article by Michael Lewis is a good primer: Beware of Greeks bearing bonds.
In short, low retirement age, endemic tax dodging at all levels of society, and the fact that Greece's credit rating automatically jumped a huge amount as soon as it entered the Euro. It's a bit like someone on low income being handed a £10k line of credit - hard to resist spending it.
Posted 11 months ago # -
endemic tax dodging
There was something on radio 4 about his during round 1. A Greek Doctor was saying he was considered strange by his colleges as he declared his earnings and didn't ask for cash up front before treatment! When many Doctors are wanting cash nudge nudge wink wink you know it's endemic.
Posted 11 months ago # -
When my (Greek) father-in-law was in hospital, shortly before he died, my mother in law had to take a big wad of cash with her when she visited him, so that she could pay the doctor for him to be treated on a less-than-geological time scale. I was appalled but she considered it to be normal.
Posted 11 months ago # -
I urge you to read the Lewis article, in that case - he doesn't mince his words:
The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2007 has just now created a new opportunity for travel: financial-disaster tourism. The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.” What they wanted to do with money in the dark varied. Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. All these different societies were touched by the same event, but each responded to it in its own peculiar way. No response was as peculiar as the Greeks’, however: anyone who had spent even a few days talking to people in charge of the place could see that. But to see just how peculiar it was, you had to come to this monastery...As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials.
It gets better (or weirder, depending on your point of view) from there.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Mainly interest to all those that have so (not) benevolently lent them money they can't afford to borrow. Googel "Golman Sachs Greece" or something similar.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Posted 11 months ago #
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