Greece is a mess, yes, but that's not the whole story, you racists

[foolsguinea]

In PastTense’s thread Anti-Austerity Party Wins in Greece: Will Greece Leave the Euro?, the first page was pretty well packed with ridiculous, implicitly racist, ignorant stereotypes about Greece. I read in several posts a wild callousness toward both the general Greek populace and the political parties in power now that are trying to clean up the mess made by a previous bunch of bozos, which comes from sheer indifference and failure to differentiate between one Greek and another. That is, in fact, racist.

Der Trihs, bless 'im, was trying to stand up to it until he got suspended.

Well here’s the Pit thread, because y’all need one.

Velocity, you’re an ass who doesn’t understand practical economics. Punishing the indebted does no good, that’s why we don’t have debtor’s prisons.
Rune, I suspect you voted for Thatcher. (Yes, that’s an insult.)
Stringbean, well, you’re mostly an elitist twit, I guess.
More names to come, probably.

Greece is corrupt? It’s hard to collect taxes? So? That’s not what brought this on.

The USA can’t even pass taxes to cover its own expenditures, and our “conservatives” decided to defund the IRS so more tax cheats could get away with it. And yet, we’re not as generally screwed over by events as Greece.

Oh, and Greece didn’t bring down international finance, nor did Spain. They were poor countries caught in the deluge. Nope, the USA came up with the swindles. The little, poor countries got swamped because they were little and poor, basically.

I’m from Missouri. Settled by flinty Germans and Scots, actually, imagine that. We breathe corruption, and I rail against it. But if Missouri suffered from an economic disaster, or Florida, or Alabama, or Michigan, there’d still be some relief, because those states are in fiscal union with the rest of the USA. At the very least, there would still be pensions, and probably a lot more.

The same goes for Rheinland-Pfalz and Thüringen in Germany; the same goes for poor sectors of Great Britain.

Greece doesn’t have that. There is no United States of Europe. There is monetary union without fiscal union. No common pension fund, no common apparatus of taxation and spending. So Greece suffers with no help from Europe while its debt is denominated in Euros.

Mario Draghi is trying to do what he can through European Central Bank, but he has a lot of pushback from…well, racists. Look at the terms for the periphery: PIIGS. GIPSIs. I didn’t realize until today just how deliberate and nasty those acronyms are. This is how the periphery is seen, apparently–“subhuman” by implication.

Of course, you’re probably the kind of self-satisfied twits who think that the wealthy “blue states” of the USA should cut off the “red states.” (OK, I’ve probably said as much myself, but then, I’m from a GOP district in a reddening purple state and I come by my hatred by long irritation.) Of course, that is how it used to be, except with more freedom of movement. And then folks like Lyndon Johnson did something about it to fight poverty. I think he was right and jerks like us were wrong.

And you probably cheered when Maggie Thatcher busted the unions. Whoopty-doo.

[foolsguinea]

As I said in the GD thread:

@foolsguinea

Payments (outflows) require income (inflows). It gets worse than that in interactions between a lender from a rich country and major investment projects in a poor country. The poor country can get totally screwed over.

German banks got into these relationships.

See, I actually studied the S&L collapse in the USA in the 1980’s. The temptation to make bad loans is there for many of us.

And it looks like Greece had politicians willing to put other people on the hook for what they borrowed, but it took German participation for make it happen.

The Greek people are being blamed for a bad deal made by elites in both countries. That is unfair.

[Chefguy]

‘Greek’ is not a race, it’s an ethnicity. A more appropriate word might be bigot, but even that sounds too strong for what’s being said. Ignorant, perhaps.

[XT]

So, you are saying that people who think that the Greeks caused much of their own problems are racists because it’s all Americans fault? And you don’t like Thatcher but they probably do because they are racists?

You seemed to be talking to yourself in that other thread, so was wondering what you’d come up with here. I guess now I know.

[Stringbean]

You’re defending the guy (Der Trihs) who correlated affirmation of Euro-imposed austerity with deliberate intent for Greece to burn and millions to starve.

So you’re not really in grand company on this issue.

As far as the Greek people, they had a very cozy arrangement with their corrupt government. Something like 50% of the Greeks worked for the government. Tax revenue was under-received because they took advantage of a corrupt system and cut every corner they could to not “pay their fair share.” They were given very generous benefits as a result of working for a corrupt government, and now that the time has come to pay the piper, they are protesting in the streets and blaming the Germans.

It’s pathetic. Get your shit together, fix your government, learn to live within your means, and join the rest of civilization where people will trust that you can pay back the money you borrow. The Greek people are complicit in this debacle and if they want to survive like the big boys they need to put on their big-boy pants and catch up to the rest of us.

/elitist rant

[The_Joker_and_the_Thief]

Is it possible in theory that your opponents genuinely hold their beliefs, or that they are merely confused or misinformed? Or do you actually believe that the only possible reason for disagreeing with your claims is racism?

ETA: What Stringbean said. They’re fucking toddlers who want to be pampered.

[Sage_Rat]

This OP makes about as much sense as if someone was to complain that everyone on the board is racist against Texans, since they slam Texas so hard whenever the topic of the death penalty comes up.

Minus an all-knowing, infallible deity who chooses to appear and give a definitive answer, no particular local norm is better or worse than any other. There’s some sort of history and logic that lead up to that point, that the people have chosen to embrace of their own will.

But at the same time, deciding to embrace a choice like that can have consequences. The inhabitants of Easter Island destroyed the environment that supported them, because (presumably) their religion demanded it. Pointing that out doesn’t make one racist against Ancient Easter Islanders. One person might say it in a denigrating fashion, another person might say it as an interesting piece of history, and yet another might be in awe at the sort of devotion that sort of undertaking requires. But no matter who says it, it’s still the fact of the circumstances. Pretending otherwise might be “polite”, but it’s also not productive. Nor is it productive to decide what the intent of the person was, who said it.

[camille]

@Sage_Rat

The inhabitants of Easter Island destroyed the environment that supported them, because (presumably) their religion demanded it. Pointing that out doesn’t make one racist against Ancient Easter Islanders. One person might say it in a denigrating fashion, another person might say it as an interesting piece of history, and yet another might be in awe at the sort of devotion that sort of undertaking requires. But no matter who says it, it’s still the fact of the circumstances. Pretending otherwise might be “polite”, but it’s also not productive. Nor is it productive to decide what the intent of the person was, who said it.

How is it more “productive” to say something in a denigrating fashion, when there are less denigrating ways to communicate the same idea?

Would you really use that style in a real life discussion with people who have a personal stake in the situation? If not, then why do you think it is appropriate in a forum like GD that encourages polite debate and persuasion?

I won’t presume your intention, but it would be helpful if you explained your choice to use insensitive analogies about a real life situation that involves human suffering.

[usedtobe]

How did the Greeks view the chronic shortfall of tax revenue.
The billionaire shipping tycoons never paid taxes, so nobody else did, either?

But we can all get Government jobs, work 20 hours a week and retire at full pension at 55!

Yeah, this will work!

When you make the French look industrious by comparison, there is something quite wrong.

But yes, it’s all the nasty old USA’'s fault. Poor little Greece. And now the mean Germans actually expect to be repaid!
There is no Justice! Waaahhhh!

[camille]

@usedtobe

But we can all get Government jobs, work 20 hours a week and retire at full pension at 55!

This kind of bs is part of the problem. Simply not true, and easily refuted. Do you require a cite, or are you capable of doing some research before repeating this ridiculous meme?

[camille]

@usedtobe

But we can all get Government jobs, work 20 hours a week and retire at full pension at 55!

@camille

This kind of bs is part of the problem. Simply not true, and easily refuted. Do you require a cite, or are you capable of doing some research before repeating this ridiculous meme?

Some cites for the “lazy” Greek bashers:

Chart of Public Sector Employment by Country

OECD Stats Average Annual Hours Worked by Country

Greek Pension and Retirement Information (pdf)

[BrainGlutton]

@Stringbean

You’re defending the guy (Der Trihs) who correlated affirmation of Euro-imposed austerity with deliberate intent for Greece to burn and millions to starve.

Well, not intent, I’m sure, but indifference/obliviousness is plausible.

[Sage_Rat]

@camille

How is it more “productive” to say something in a denigrating fashion, when there are less denigrating ways to communicate the same idea?

To some ears, “Texans execute more criminals than any other state”, sounds denigrating, no matter how you say it.

I didn’t read closely every post in the thread, and there may indeed have been someone stating things in a denigrating fashion, but if we’re using the Der Trihs metric, I can comfortably say that there would have been no way to state anything that conflicted with his vision, which he wouldn’t have considered to be racist and denigrating.

[camille]

@Sage_Rat

To some ears, “Texans execute more criminals than any other state”, sounds denigrating, no matter how you say it.

I didn’t read closely every post in the thread, and there may indeed have been someone stating things in a denigrating fashion, but if we’re using the Der Trihs metric, I can comfortably say that there would have been no way to state anything that conflicted with his vision, which he wouldn’t have considered to be racist and denigrating.

I didn’t ask about Der Trihs, and I’m not defending his response to you. I’m asking about your choice to use insensitive analogies. Go back and read my post again. Also your subsequent analogy about a finger up the ass - it wasn’t even relevant to the post you were replying to. Do you typically employ this type of language when discussing real life issues that involve human suffering?

[Aquadementia]

@usedtobe

How did the Greeks view the chronic shortfall of tax revenue.
The billionaire shipping tycoons never paid taxes, so nobody else did, either?

But we can all get Government jobs, work 20 hours a week and retire at full pension at 55!

Yeah, this will work!

When you make the French look industrious by comparison, there is something quite wrong.

But yes, it’s all the nasty old USA’'s fault. Poor little Greece. And now the mean Germans actually expect to be repaid!
There is no Justice! Waaahhhh!

I thought the premise is that it was Maggie Thatchers fault.

But I’d hate for the Chinese to be saying
“Lazy Americans, not wanting to work 70 hours a week in a sweatshop only not to get paid for the month! We’re going to stop buying your debt.”

[XT]

@camille

Some cites for the “lazy” Greek bashers:

Chart of Public Sector Employment by Country

OECD Stats Average Annual Hours Worked by Country

Greek Pension and Retirement Information (pdf)

I can’t open the PDFs right now, but the first cite doesn’t really demonstrate anything that I can tell except maybe that the poster you were quoting was kind of tongue in cheek about everyone getting a government job in Greece. If you really don’t know or don’t think that the government sector was a major issue in their crisis you need to understand that it’s more than being about the absolute percentage of workers being ‘government’ verse ‘private sector’.

For generations, political power in Greece has been based in large part on providing public sector jobs in exchange for votes. To protect workers from being thrown out when a rival party came to power, virtually iron-clad job protections for government workers were enshrined in the Constitution.

Though it was very rare for a government worker to be dismissed, this did not stop politicians from continuing to hire supporters — feeding a bloated, inefficient and expensive public sector that was accountable to no one.

Every political party, whether in the coalition government or in opposition, fears the consequences of losing the support of a voting bloc of more than 700,000 government employees and their families.

So today, for every seven private employees who have been laid off, only one has left the public sector. This leaves fewer and fewer workers in a country where the unemployment rate now hovers around 25 percent to pay the taxes that provide the salaries for the people who work for the government.

The current government, formed by the New Democracy, Pasok and Democratic Left political parties, while devoted to keeping Greece in the euro zone, makes no secret of its allegiance to its supporters in the public sector. When the coalition was formed in June it immediately issued a statement saying that “the general aim is no more cuts to salaries and pensions, no more taxes,” and added that it would not carry out any public sector layoffs.

Greece’s creditors — the troika comprised of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — have made public-sector layoffs a condition for providing the next tranche of the biggest bailout in history. But political pressure remains fierce. Many analysts say that the newfound strength of Syriza, the formerly fringe leftist group that is now the main opposition party in Parliament, came as support eroded for the governing coalition that is trying to reform Greece.

The expansion of Greece’s huge government sector took decades to create, but its growth in recent years has been particularly striking. Public employment grew by fivefold from 1970 through 2009 — at an annual growth rate of 4 percent, according to a recent academic study by Zafiris Tzannatos and Iannis Monogios… Over the same four decades, employment in the private sector increased by only 27 percent — an annual rate of less than 1 percent.

“Instead of shrinking the bloated government apparatus and making it more efficient, New Democracy and Pasok hardly even touched it,” Stefanos Manos, a former Greek finance minister, said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine in June.

If your point is simply that some people are exaggerating some aspects, or maybe doing parodies of the Greeks, then ok, you are right. But the overall theme of THIS thread is that anyone who thinks that the Greeks were at fault for their issues is basically a racist (the OPs own words), and that’s pretty much bullshit (we’ll leave aside the anti-US rantage, which seems to come out of left field, er so to speak, and has little to do with anything in this situation, since this is primarily a European matter with the US being peripheral to most of it…well, unless you feel the OP is correct and it’s all the US’s fault of course).

[Rachellelogram]

It’s not our fault they’re so Greecey.

@Chefguy

‘Greek’ is not a race, it’s an ethnicity. A more appropriate word might be bigot, but even that sounds too strong for what’s being said. Ignorant, perhaps.

Xenophobe is the word you’re looking for.

[smiling_bandit]

There are three major issues going on here:

(1) Greece is a complete mess and has been for decades. In fact, it had to outright falsify its budget a few years back to squeak into the EU.

(2) It was incredibly foolish of them to join the EU, because they lost control over their currency, and they are now dealing with the consequences of that.

(3) Unfortunately, Greece hasn’t taken many realistic steps to improve their economy. They haven’t, and apparently don’t want, to roll back the piles of regulations and meaningless bureaucracy that is choking off their productivity. In many ways, austerity the ugly flipside of this failure. Greece is now a dependent state that cannot function without cash gifts from the rest of Europe, so Europe demands that Greece spend less or they don’t get any little presents.

[Miller]

@foolsguinea

Rune, I suspect you voted for Thatcher. (Yes, that’s an insult.)

Isn’t Rune from Denmark?

[camille]

@XT

I can’t open the PDFs right now, but the first cite doesn’t really demonstrate anything that I can tell except maybe that the poster you were quoting was kind of tongue in cheek about everyone getting a government job in Greece. If you really don’t know or don’t think that the government sector was a major issue in their crisis you need to understand that it’s more than being about the absolute percentage of workers being ‘government’ verse ‘private sector’.

**If your point is simply that some people are exaggerating some aspects, or maybe doing parodies of the Greeks, then ok, you are right. ** But the overall theme of THIS thread is that anyone who thinks that the Greeks were at fault for their issues is basically a racist (the OPs own words), and that’s pretty much bullshit (we’ll leave aside the anti-US rantage, which seems to come out of left field, er so to speak, and has little to do with anything in this situation, since this is primarily a European matter with the US being peripheral to most of it…well, unless you feel the OP is correct and it’s all the US’s fault of course).

My emphasis. Was that so hard? Boy, talk about burying the lede…

Yes, I was simply providing cites to correct the factual errors of a nasty stereotypical meme I’m tired of seeing, here and elsewhere. And yes, I am familiar with the situation in Greece. I have family there. Funny that I provide facts and you think to educate me, but the drive by poster spouting bullshit is only “kind of” being “tongue in cheek”. :dubious:

I do agree that major reform is needed and will be beneficial to the Greek people going forward. And they have made some strides, at great personal cost to the population, that have mostly been ignored by the negative posters. But I’m not an economist, and I was kind of hoping to read some good ideas and analyses in that thread, so I was just a little disappointed with some of the dismissive and insensitive comments (I don’t mean you personally - you’ve actually been pretty good, considering your issues with Europe ;)).