Athens is burning.

AManFromEarth

This is what happens when two countries decide to skip a few steps on the road to continental unification and then spend ten years playing kick the can with the problems that creates.

I have no sympathy for the Eurozone in this instance. Germany and France could easily do things to help the PIGS countries (like use the ECB as a goddamn central bank for one) but they won't. It's gonna suck for the global economy when the Euro collapses but Germany can't just sit on the south of Europe and use it to prop up its feet for the reason behind these riots: the Greeks (and eventually the Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, and eventually the French though they won't admit it) aren't going to stand for Berlin telling them what to do.

But also if you have no money you have to do something. You can't just keep digging your hole deeper. And I don't know that the Greeks realize this.

Echo

Regina Fong wrote:

Don't the Greeks retire at like, 55?

Normal retirement age in Greece is 65.

AManFromEarth wrote:

But also if you have no money you have to do something. You can't just keep digging your hole deeper. And I don't know that the Greeks realize this.

Oh, I think the average citizen realizes it. But they also see that there's fuckall they can do about it as an individual. Hence, outrage.

Regina Fong

Pi-r8 wrote:

Regina Fong wrote:

Don't the Greeks retire at like, 55?

Yeah sorry, no sympathy. Welcome to the real world, where people who aren't independently wealthy don't actually retire during the prime of their middle age life.

Also, tax evasion is something of a national sport in Greece, so reducing private sector wages might not actually have much effect on tax revenues.

Actually, no, that's a conservative myth. The Greeks work longer and more hours than anyone else in Europe. They just don't have the infrastructure necessary to keep pace with Germany.

Not so much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement

They retire at 55 in huge droves, and if you think that hasn't affected their economy, you are wrong.

-edit-

@Echo

Early retirement in Greece is 55, and a lot of Greeks retire early. Far too many, in fact.

AManFromEarth

Echo wrote:

Regina Fong wrote:

Don't the Greeks retire at like, 55?

Normal retirement age in Greece is 65.

AManFromEarth wrote:

But also if you have no money you have to do something. You can't just keep digging your hole deeper. And I don't know that the Greeks realize this.

Oh, I think the average citizen realizes it. But they also see that there's fuckall they can do about it as an individual. Hence, outrage.

True. I can't really fault the Greeks too much in this situation anyway. I mean, they have some problems with how their country runs but they've been enabled by the EU for ten years.

Germany and France knew this was coming since they created the Euro and refused to do anything until it was too late and only letting Greece leave the Euro would help (it would suck for Greece now but they'd be better off in the long term and it would protect the single currency which is important for the world's financial markets) and they won't even consider it.

Europe can't exist as a half nation. Either they become the United States of Europe like they planned or they become NAFTA or NATO like with common law and treaty, but whatever they are now isn't going to last much longer.

Echo

Regina Fong wrote:

Early retirement in Greece is 55, and a lot of Greeks retire early. Far too many, in fact.

I'd love to see a source on this. Because all I've seen is newspapers reporting it as common knowledge without citing sources.

Regina Fong

Echo wrote:

Regina Fong wrote:

Early retirement in Greece is 55, and a lot of Greeks retire early. Far too many, in fact.

I'd love to see a source on this. Because all I've seen is newspapers reporting it as common knowledge without citing sources.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2010-05-18-europeretire18_ST_N.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/global/12pension.html?pagewanted=all

Sounds like the early retirement age is actually 50, for people "arduous" professions such as hairdressers and musicians.

Echo

USA Today really doesn't like sources. What I'd want is actual studies to look at - what the rules say you can retire at is different from what people actually retire at. At least USA Today had this statement:

As in many EU countries, the general retirement age in Greece is 65, although the actual average is about 61. However, the deeply fragmented system also provides for early retirement — as early as 55 for men and 50 for women — in many professions classified as "arduous and unhealthy."

Regina Fong

Echo wrote:

USA Today really doesn't like sources. What I'd want is actual studies to look at - what the rules say you can retire at is different from what people actually retire at. At least USA Today had this statement:

As in many EU countries, the general retirement age in Greece is 65, although the actual average is about 61. However, the deeply fragmented system also provides for early retirement — as early as 55 for men and 50 for women — in many professions classified as "arduous and unhealthy."

Sorry I don't have academic sources for you. But I am finding newspaper articles from across the world that keep showing the same numbers and figures.

Either there is a massive, global, international conspiracy to lie about Greek retirement practices, or the Greek people do in fact take advantage of a very permissive early retirement system in large enough numbers to hurt their economy.

I don't care whether I have convinced anyone of my original point, but I have de-bunked pi-r8tes comment about a "conservative myth" and that's enough for me.

Phillishere

Regina Fong wrote:

Don't the Greeks retire at like, 55?

Yeah sorry, no sympathy. Welcome to the real world, where people who aren't independently wealthy don't actually retire during the prime of their middle age life.

Also, tax evasion is something of a national sport in Greece, so reducing private sector wages might not actually have much effect on tax revenues.

No. That's propaganda.

In cases of disability, they can retire at 55 on reduced pensions. Their average retirement rate is actually higher than Germany's.

There's a lot of shit piled higher and deeper about the Greeks. They are not perfect, but they are being raped and are responding accordingly.

Elldren

Regina Fong wrote:

Echo wrote:

USA Today really doesn't like sources. What I'd want is actual studies to look at - what the rules say you can retire at is different from what people actually retire at. At least USA Today had this statement:

As in many EU countries, the general retirement age in Greece is 65, although the actual average is about 61. However, the deeply fragmented system also provides for early retirement — as early as 55 for men and 50 for women — in many professions classified as "arduous and unhealthy."

Sorry I don't have academic sources for you. But I am finding newspaper articles from across the world that keep showing the same numbers and figures.

Either there is a massive, global, international conspiracy to lie about Greek retirement practices, or the Greek people do in fact take advantage of a very permissive early retirement system in large enough numbers to hurt their economy.

I don't care whether I have convinced anyone of my original point, but I have de-bunked pi-r8tes comment about a "conservative myth" and that's enough for me.

A widely reported myth is still a myth.

Unsourced articles prove nothing

Echo

Phillishere wrote:

In cases of disability, they can retire at 55 on reduced pensions. Their average retirement rate is actually higher than Germany's.

There's a lot of shit piled higher and deeper about the Greeks. They are not perfect, but they are being raped and are responding accordingly.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. What their retirement rules say and what reality looks like doesn't intersect.

Regina Fong wrote:

Either there is a massive, global, international conspiracy to lie about Greek retirement practices, or the Greek people do in fact take advantage of a very permissive early retirement system in large enough numbers to hurt their economy.

Or it's "business as usual in media" - everyone reports the same figure the first guy reported. (Which is how some reports grow by a factor of ten due to the first newspaper "rounding up")

Elldren

Echo wrote:

Phillishere wrote:

In cases of disability, they can retire at 55 on reduced pensions. Their average retirement rate is actually higher than Germany's.

There's a lot of shit piled higher and deeper about the Greeks. They are not perfect, but they are being raped and are responding accordingly.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. What their retirement rules say and what reality looks like doesn't intersect.

Regina Fong wrote:

Either there is a massive, global, international conspiracy to lie about Greek retirement practices, or the Greek people do in fact take advantage of a very permissive early retirement system in large enough numbers to hurt their economy.

Or it's "business as usual in media" - everyone reports the same figure the first guy reported. (Which is how some reports grow by a factor of ten due to the first newspaper "rounding up")

It's less deliberate conspiracy and more game of telephone

ronya

You can get percentage of the population employed at each age group straight from OECD data. Wikipedia has a nice table. Unfortunately percentage employed at each age group is obviously uncontrolled for "normal" workforce participation levels, wealth, productivity, education, etc.

AManFromEarth

Can we get sources for both of these claims, actually? I'd rather not take either of them at face value.

Karl

Kagera wrote:

So this was all pretty inevitable from the fact that the government tried to put half the country on the payroll to gain votes am I correct?

I'm under the impression that the main issue with Greece is:

1. Tax evasion is widespread. Like its a standard thing that people do.
2.As such, any political party running for government does not include dealing with tax evasion as part of their manifesto because no one wants to fix the problem.
2. The government spends money on public services (because the public does want this) which it did not actually have due to people not paying their fucking taxes.
3. Greece takes out loans to pay for public services.
4. Global financial crisis happens and banks ask for their money back (or to start repayments).
5. Greece doesn't have the money. And upon reviewing their financial situation, Greece is in MASSIVE amounts of debt with no viable plan to resolve the situation.
6.Everyone in Europe shits a brick.

That's my current understanding of the situation that caused the Greek financial crisis (and please D&D correct me if I'm wrong).

zeeny

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/publication14992_en.pdf

p 78. Information is an old exit.

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.
Edit2: Greek's pension expenditure as % of GDP isn't necessary a problem either...before people mention it.
Edit3: omg omg, look how I'm not lazy today: (Greece = EL)

AManFromEarth

zeeny wrote:

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/publication14992_en.pdf

p 78. Information is an old exit.

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.
Edit2: Greek's pension expenditure as % of GDP isn't necessary a problem either...before people mention it.

I seem to be having a stroke, I can't find Greece on that list (or is it not abbreviated as GR?)

zeeny

EL is the EU abbrev. I edited it in, didn't realize it will cause confusion.

AManFromEarth

zeeny wrote:

EL is the EU abbrev. I edited it in, didn't realize it will cause confusion.

Ah, that's weird. Thanks.

Echo

zeeny wrote:

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.

The Swedish PM just started talking about raising it to 75.

The Fourth Estate

EL = Ellinon, Greek for Hellenic

Elldren

AManFromEarth wrote:

zeeny wrote:

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/publication14992_en.pdf

p 78. Information is an old exit.

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.
Edit2: Greek's pension expenditure as % of GDP isn't necessary a problem either...before people mention it.

I seem to be having a stroke, I can't find Greece on that list (or is it not abbreviated as GR?)

EL

Ελληνική Δημοκρατία

Hellenic Republic

The ISO code GR is actually kind of dickish for using an exonym as its basis

AManFromEarth

Elldren wrote:

AManFromEarth wrote:

zeeny wrote:

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/publication14992_en.pdf

p 78. Information is an old exit.

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.
Edit2: Greek's pension expenditure as % of GDP isn't necessary a problem either...before people mention it.

I seem to be having a stroke, I can't find Greece on that list (or is it not abbreviated as GR?)

EL

Ελληνική Δημοκρατία

Hellenic Republic

The ISO code GR is actually kind of dickish for using an exonym as its basis

Cool, it's fun to learn new things.

zeeny

Echo wrote:

zeeny wrote:

Edit: For the record, all European countries will need to raise the average retirement age and they'll need to do it soon.

The Swedish PM just started talking about raising it to 75.

Compromise. 80 for blond people, 60 for everybody else.

dojango

Pi-r8 wrote:

From here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/the-killing-of-greece.html

What a complete mess.

What makes the situation completely surreal are the numbers. Greek debt in 2008 was approximately 260bn Euro. The first bailout was 110bn, the current one, that appears to be tearing the country apart, is 130bn. Add in the PSI+ haircut of approximately 100bn ( after sweetener deduction ) and you realized that Europe could have simply paid the entire bill in 2008 and saved itself 80bn Euro. Ok, that is an oversimplification of the problem but you can see my point.

I just saw this post and felt compelled to dredge it up and kick it down. The reason why debt was so low in 2008 was because the government had been cooking the book for years. Decades. Since Maastrict. After the government fell in 2008 due to an unrelated scandal, the new techocratic government did an audit and found that that number was wildly inaccurate. The debt is at 1.2 trillion now, and it hasn't risen by a trillion in 4 years.

SanderJK

Europe isn't bailing out Greece in the traditional sense. It's loaning them money at reduced rates instead. While this certainly is market distorting, no money is being thrown directly at them, the only thing that is lowered is the interest pressure.

The private bank haircut is the only real direct reduction of debt so far, and I'm not sure it's completely negotiated yet (What I heard last was 50%, rest in 30 year bonds @ 3.5% interest, which is a 70% loss on the bank ledgers).

The somewhat scary thing is that people are now talking about the ECB taking a similar haircut... except the ECB is the one that created the money to buy the debt in the first place. So that means debt just magically disappears right? That sounds bad.

The Greeks have the lowest tax-pressure in Europe (About 30%, where Nordic countries are at about 40%), but more crucially while the Greeks work more hours/year than almost any other, their productivity is just about the lowest in the EU. They simply are not competitive, noone in the last decade moved their industry or services to Greece.

joshofalltrades

So, basically, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are the heroes that Greece and the Eurozone needs, but don't deserve.

tinwhiskers

MrMister wrote:

tinwhiskers wrote:

Basically Greece is fucked.
There are ~11 million Greeks

Only 5 million Greeks are in the labor force, thanks in part to the early retirement age.
Of that 5 million 20% are unemployed.
Of the remaining 4 million, 40% are public sector employees.
So you are down to 2.4 million people. Who need to generate enough wealth to give living expenses and full healthcare(plus schools/social services ect) to 11 million people.

Um, public sector employees generate wealth. Proof by contradiction:

1) Assume, for the sake of argument, that public sector employees do not generate wealth.
2) If so, then in the limiting case where a country's entire workforce was public sector, that country would generate no wealth; the populace would borrow or starve.
3) The USSR had, for a period, 100% public sector employment without borrowing or starving.
4) Contradiction from 1-3
5) Therefore, 1 is false.

They CAN generate wealth. In the case of Greece they aren't. For instance their rail road takes in 100m € and spends 400m € in payroll(and 300m in other expenses), because the average employee makes 65k € a year. And heavy industries took a beating because of the GFC, which is where a lot of the non-bureaucratic public sector Greek workforce is.

Atomika

tinwhiskers wrote:

For instance their rail road takes in 100m € and spends 400m € in payroll(and 300m in other expenses), because the average employee makes 65k € a year.

Welp, there's yer problem. [/greasy mechanic]

Echo

What a coincidence, news here just had an (unsourced) article about retirement ages.

Icelanders work the longest - 64.8 years.
Sweden second, 64.3.

Switzerland, Holland, Norway and the UK are between 63-63.5.

Germany 62.2, Spain 62.3.

Greece, 61.5.

At the bottom of the list are Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, France and Malta, between 60-61.

Lowest are Hungaria (59.3) and Slovakia (58.8).

The list only had 20 countries, and is based on information given from the actual countries, which may or may not be accurate.

zeeny

Your "reporter" is reading the forums and sourcing my pic. SACK HIM.

Regina Fong

Elldren wrote:

Regina Fong wrote:

Echo wrote:

USA Today really doesn't like sources. What I'd want is actual studies to look at - what the rules say you can retire at is different from what people actually retire at. At least USA Today had this statement:

As in many EU countries, the general retirement age in Greece is 65, although the actual average is about 61. However, the deeply fragmented system also provides for early retirement — as early as 55 for men and 50 for women — in many professions classified as "arduous and unhealthy."

Sorry I don't have academic sources for you. But I am finding newspaper articles from across the world that keep showing the same numbers and figures.

Either there is a massive, global, international conspiracy to lie about Greek retirement practices, or the Greek people do in fact take advantage of a very permissive early retirement system in large enough numbers to hurt their economy.

I don't care whether I have convinced anyone of my original point, but I have de-bunked pi-r8tes comment about a "conservative myth" and that's enough for me.

A widely reported myth is still a myth.

Unsourced articles prove nothing

I'm not finding anything pointing to these figures being mythological. A handful of people on the internet claiming a bunch of articles from widely diverse media sources are propaganda...

Sounds fishy.

Echo

Regina Fong wrote:

I'm not finding anything pointing to these figures being mythological. A handful of people on the internet claiming a bunch of articles from widely diverse media sources are propaganda...

That's because we're not finding anything pointing to these figures being factual.

kildy

It's not really fishy at all for a news company to cite and number, and everyone else reporting on the story to use it. It's actually pretty freaking common.

the OCED numbers are all I can find, and they don't look all that atrocious compared to the rest of the countries involved (percentage of people 55-59 employed), it certainly doesn't look like the entire country just fucks off on their 55th birthday.

Greece's story seems to be almost entirely a story about a country that had been cooking it's books for decades, and then someone figured it out and went "oh, FUCK."

zeeny

The fuck...are you two still arguing about the average retirement age after we sourced it... ?

Echo

zeeny wrote:

The fuck...are you two still arguing about the average retirement age after we sourced it... ?

Funny thing is that we both sourced it too. From the same source.

zeeny

Echo wrote:

zeeny wrote:

The fuck...are you two still arguing about the average retirement age after we sourced it... ?

Funny thing is that we both sourced it too. From the same source.

.....that shit's scary then. You guys are meta arguing. I'm not touching this shit!

PantsB

MrMister wrote:

One of my least favorite of the commentaries on Greece is the running anti-public-sector thread. I suspect that there are monied interests out there very much interested in giving Greece a 'shock therapy' treatment similar to the former USSR, where state assets were dissolved and sold to private interests at fire sale prices; the consequence was massively impoverishing the people who had formerly held them collectively in order to birth a new generation of super-plutocrats. No thanks.

I haven't really understood how selling profitable businesses would be a benefit to getting the balance sheet back in order. At best you have a short term infusion of capital.

frandelgearslip wrote:

The USSR's public sector included factories, farms etc. which (I assume) the Greek public sector does not.

The government of Greece has a state monopoly on many major industries and utilities (power, water, telephone, gaming, oil refinery, natural gas) so the "40% public sector" thing is misleading.

Regina Fong

My only issue is that pointing to somones sources and saying they aren't good enough, does not, in fact, leave you free to just make up your own narrative and shill it as fact.

Greeks are the hardest working Europeans? Longest hours?

OK, prove that, guy who claimed it.

CptKemzik

Likewise I don't think Greece's economic crisis can be pointed towards "hairdressers and musicians," "retiring in droves at age 55." Unless we're suddenly working in Fox's world news department now.