# Re Greek unions & protesters violently fighting EU austerity plan - What's their solution?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-greek-unions-protesters-violently-fighting-eu-austerity-plan-whats-their-solution/538353>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 5, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-greek-unions-protesters-violently-fighting-eu-austerity-plan-whats-their-solution/538353 "2010-05-05T00:42:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 39

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**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-greek-unions-protesters-violently-fighting-eu-austerity-plan-whats-their-solution/538353/39 "2010-05-07T04:31:38Z")

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> [@Laudenum](#):
>
> You just talk to yourself because you like what you hear.
> 
> You are correct that Greece loses $30,000,000,000 a year in tax dodging.[cite](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02evasion.html).  
> That isn’t the uber-rich, or big business, that is the ordinary Greek people, and the middle classes, who have resisted all attempts at tax reform, even when the EU kept on telling them that they needed to deal with the issue.
> 
> The problem is the Greek people: they want massive social welfare, abundant corruption (try getting planning permission in Greece without bribing a public servant:rolleyes:), and a ridiculously low retirement age, but they don’t want to pay any tax (or rather, they want it all paid by somebody else).  
> You have _doctors_ who don’t pay any tax.
> 
> The problem isn’t the rich, the problem is with the Greeks as a whole being incredibly immature, and refusing to accept that cuts have to happen, corruption has to be targeted, and taxes have to be paid.

But it’s been that way for a generation, and the protesters can’t see that they did anything different - yet things are different. Consequently it must have been (and indeed likely was) someone else’s fault that the system - deranged though it was, it was more or less sustainable - collapsed. IOW why should they have to pay for a problem they didn’t (directly) cause?

Note I’m not saying their POV is reasonable, quite the opposite. But this thread seems to be struggling for their justification and I believe that is it. Not dissimilar in fact to the teabaggers: raw inchoate anger with no real justifiable cause or possible solution.

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