Bumcakes.
Ratâs cocks.
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Yep all of greeceâs debt is to Germany. Thanks for playing, try again.
Btw a social safety net is needed but not one where one can retire before 61. 75% of Greeks retire before age 61.
As you can probably guess as a german citizen I know better than most that no one is to blame for their elected governments but the voters.
Politics is not virtue ethics. The actions of Greek voters 20 years ago do not justify starving Greek children today.
Because, once again, âGreeceâ is not some monolithic anthropomorphic entity any more than your beloved âGermanyâ. You canât make all Greeks the villains and all Germans the heroes just by abstracting really hard.
Maybe you shouldnât bring this up while in the process of denigrating an entire ethnic group en masse (specifically to make them a scapegoat for an economic crisis). Some might draw parallels that are not favorable to your position.
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The large majority of it is.
EDIT: Scroll down for graph.
The next top three lenders arenât making such a fuss as Germany is by a long shot.
Good attempt, but must try harder next time.
This about sums up the current German attitude.
Please go to the back of the classroom.
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Hmm so here we go. So we drag the debt Germany was forgiven 70 years ago into the discussion but the actions of greek voters 20 years ago donât matter, rightâŚ
See, thats why. Iâm getting blamed for actions of a government my great-grandfathers voted to power 80 years ago but the greeks voting behavior from 20 years ago doesnât count. nice.
It depends, if youâre ready to write off the debt like they did, then no.
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Is that due to laziness of greeks or due to something else? That little tidbit tells us nothing, except that 75% of Greeks get to enjoy hanging out with their grandkids unhindered⌠which is more than many Americans can say.
Why not retire before 61? You free up spaces for younger workers, and you actually get some time to enjoy life instead of breaking your back for a faceless corporation that doesnât give a damn about you and your quality of life. Why precisely is that a bad thing?
Also, citation on that?
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So what do you want to happen to the Greek economy (and by extension, the Greeks)?
My understanding (happy to be corrected) is that they have implemented austerity, but because their entire economy has contracted (by ~25%?), theyâre more in debt now than when they started. Iâd not be even slightly surprised if there isnât a link between austerity, and nobody having enough money to keep the economy going.
Are German holiday bookings to Greek islands down this year? How about taking a couple of islands as payment?
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Because someone has to pay those pensions. Greece has a public pension fund thatâs eating up a large part of their state budget.
Hasnât Finland also been strongly against forgiving Greeceâs debts?
Youâre not getting blamed for their actions. Youâre getting blamed for your own, that is, for speaking of âthe Greeksâ en masse and in vile ways that sound, you know, all too familiar.
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Heh. Seems like bookings might be up on last year, actually - although I did read that there have been a flurry of cancellations as people donât want to go somewhere where there isnât any food in the restaurants.
Itâs weird, pre-Euro I canât remember anyone who didnât think that currency union with Greece was a bad idea. Seems to have been the case. If (or even if not) it was a step towards a federal Europe, I think it needs to be aligned with the idea that you permanently bankroll the weaker performing regions/countries). I canât see how a single currency could work otherwise.
Iâll accept this as a valid response when you show me where I mentioned German debt being forgiven 70 years ago.
Iâm not holding you responsible for how your great-grandfathers voted. Iâm holding you responsible for engaging in the exact same sort of reasoning that prompted your great-grandfathers to vote how they did.
How they voted is their business. But youâre engaging in the essentializing of ethnic groups to scapegoat them for social problems or to excuse them from culpability. The choice of which seems to be inspired by your own nationality â your assignments of culpability or blamelessness seem to fall very distinctly between ethnic and national lines, and â quite conveniently â your fair-skinned ethnicity is off the hook while some darker-skinned Mediterranean people is the cause of all problems.
None of that can be blamed on your great-grandfathers. Itâs all stuff youâve written here. Iâm judging you based on what you say.
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So, get rid of state pensions for all people between 61 and 67. Now they need to work - and unemployment is already through the roof.
What next?
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Hence the point about freeing up spaces for younger workers, who then pay into the pension system. Isnât unemployment among young Greeks (and Italians and Spaniards) a major issue thatâs being worked through?
But again, where is your citation for the majority of greeks retiring prior to 61? I donât even know if that stat is accurate⌠also âretiringâ can also mean being pushed out of a job, off corporate payrolls and onto the public pension program. So there is that to consider as well.
So I advocate killing the greeks because of their ethnicity? I think you took that reasoning too far. Whoâs stereotyping here? If my nationality wouldâve been english would youâve drawn the same parallels? I donât think so.
I said that the greeks are equally to blame for the crisis and that the itâs not only the fault of the creditors, banks.
And yes Iâm generalizing here and rightly so because massive tax evasion was/is still rampant, perpetrated not only by the mega-rich but by a majority of the population - thatâs why itâs a problem. The public sector is overblown because a large percentage of the population profited form cronyism and corruption. The greeks voted for the governments squandering the borrowed money instead of investing it in the economy/infrastructure.
So yes - Iâm blaming a majority of the greeks for the crisis with reasons I already stated above and not because I think theyâre subhuman and need to be eradicated.
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Youâre still trying to get blood from a stone. Look at the numbers. the pensions donât even line up on the order of magnitude of the debt. The pensions look big next to a tiny GDP. German banks took some incredibly bad risks, and thatâs part of the territory when you lend money. All the whining and complaining in the world wonât change the fact that it is an incredibly bad decision to keep lending to a country already deep in hock with an epically and (as was very known to all parties at the time) corrupt government. Changing the retirement age isnât a guarantee of anything, and itâs asking the government of Greece to renege on its promises to its most vulnerable citizens in favor of its promises to a nation-state. Itâs robbing Peter to pay Paul and Paul is kind of being a dick about the whole thing, so Peter is starting to be a dick about it back. Everyone needs to take a deep breathe, suck it up, and prepare to hurt.
Germany simply isnât going to get all of its money back plus interest. Greece simply isnât going to get off scot-free. This situation only ends with everyone unhappy. You seem to think thereâs a way out that wonât do that.
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Nope. I donât have the slightest clue what to do. Doing the same stuff we did the last 7 years seems wrong though.
