Dispelling the Myths of the Greek debt crisis....

[RadioRaheem84]

The American media is capitalizing on the notion that the Greek Debt Crisis is happening because of bloated government wages to public employees. Apparently, the public sector is fully to blame with the workers bearing the brunt of the burden.

Anyone have any links on the debt crisis that negates the idea that the crisis was solely due to "overpaying" workers and public expenditures? I mean even the Daily Show with Jon Stewart called the Greeks "stupid" and not good at math for their government spending on public employees, health care and the like.

I really hope the left starts to debunk the coming onslaught of right wing mania against social programs.

[Catillina]

Good artice about the thema.


All the discussion about the lazy greek workers are just crap. read this http://www.marxist.com/myth-of-lazy-greek-workers.htm

the reality is that Ireland or UK in terms of total debt (private and public) are in a much more worse situation than Greece. but the financial big guns are from UK or US so they shoot on greece.

There is also a similar discoussion going on.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/reasons-solutions-p1745507/index.html#post1745507

[Durruti's Ghost]

I don't have any evidence that would go against the standard narrative (government budget gets too bloated, economic downturn hits, government runs out of money, government goes bankrupt). However, I think those who would blame it on the public employees and accuse those opposed to austerity measures of being "greedy" are missing half the picture.

For a capitalist economy to grow, the capitalists have to be able to turn a profit. This is how capitalism works; profits are gathered and invested into the company, allowing the company to compete with other companies and returning (ideally) even greater profits. When profit margins are high enough (for a variety of reasons, many of them having to do with imperialism), the capitalist class as a whole is able to act through its executive, the State, to grant concessions to and pacify the working class. This is the essence of reformist capitalism, of social-democracy. However, as capitalism advances and profit margins become harder to maintain due to the lack of new markets to exploit, the capitalists grow less willing to grant such concessions and may even try to roll back those that have already been granted. So, for example, a higher tax rate on capital might conceivably be enough to save the Greek government's budget; however, since the capitalists know that such a tax rate would be catastrophic for their profit margins and hence the continued growth of the capitalist economy, they will not submit to it (and even if they did, it might not work anyway). Thus, they must try to roll back the previous concessions granted to the working class by passing austerity measures.

Greece has reached, in summary, a crisis of social-democracy. If the current state of affairs is maintained, the Greek government will go bankrupt and collapse. It could try raising taxes on the capitalists, but this would not necessarily lead to increased revenue (I don't know how much of the Greek capitalists' profit margin the State currently appropriates). Thus, the only course it can confidently take is to abandon social-democracy in favor of old-fashioned "robber baron" capitalism. However, the fact that the austerity measures comprise the only course the Greek State can confidently take does not necessarily imply that they comprise the only course Greece itself can take. By abandoning social-democracy, Greece revives the conditions social-democracy was designed to put an end to--mass opposition to the capitalist system. Socialist revolution--large-scale expropriation and socialization of the means of production by the working class--thus rears its head once again. By seizing the means of production, the working class would eliminate the need to provide the capitalists with a sufficient profit margin by eliminating what makes the capitalists capitalists--that is to say, private ownership of capital. Greece and, by extension, the rest of Europe thus faces a crossroads--either the austerity measures will go through, putting the final reckoning between worker and employer off until another day, or the working class will begin to restructure society along socialist lines. What cannot happen is compromise. A situation in which neither austerity measures nor higher taxes on capital nor revolution happens could very well bring about the collapse of the Greek economy and, to paraphrase Marx, the common ruin of the struggling classes.

[cyu]

Excerpt from http://everything2.com/title/austerity

In the modern welfare state, austerity measures are what the government does when it basically runs out of money. Of course it's not limited to welfare spending, austerity-based cuts could be made in anything the government used to spend money on. (Then again, some people claim that anything the government spends money on is welfare.)

This is the key thing to do when you control the government: borrow as much as you can from the bankers, doesn't really matter what the terms are, as long as it's not so outrageous that your countrymen kick you out.

Then spend that money in whatever way you want, preferably in ways that favor the rich, such as union busting, undermining labor movements around the world (http://everything2.com/title/Colombia), making the world safe for "pro-business" (ie. pro-exploitation) governments, bailing out institutions of the rich.

Finally, now that all the money is spent, get the poor in your country to pay back the money (http://everything2.com/title/The+country+is+governed+for+the+richest%252C+for+t he+corporations%252C+the+bankers%252C+the+land+spe culators%252C+and+for+the+exploiters+of+labor), with a hefty interest, to the rich who control the banks. And if they can't pay? Well, slash all social programs. Say austerity measures are all we can do at this point. Make the unemployed beg to be exploited.

The obvious solution would be to simply assume democratic control of the means of production, tell rich creditors to take a hike, kick out all the CEOs and boards of directors, and use their salaries to pay the people who are actually doing the work. Of course, the mass media would never offer that as a possible solution to any economic crisis, since the mass media is owned by capitalists, so they only offer up diversionary proposals or claim defeatism.

[RadioRaheem84]

The obvious solution would be to simply assume democratic control of the means of production, tell rich creditors to take a hike, kick out all the CEOs and boards of directors, and use their salaries to pay the people who are actually doing the work. Of course, the mass media would never offer that as a possible solution to any economic crisis, since the mass media is owned by capitalists, so they only offer up diversionary proposals or claim defeatism.

But that isn't even in the framework the bourgeois have built up as a model for the world. Capital and private property must be protected at all cost.

Of course the solution is socialism. Of course this a crisis of not only capitalism itself but also of social democracy. It is as if the whole of capitalism is back to the crisis of the 70s with social democratic, state capitalist, bastard Keynesian, what ever nations hitting the wall, yet again.

Right Wingers and liberals are using this moment though as excuse to block reform and are scapegoating the workers, calling rioting Greeks "parasites" and "welfare queens".

[Devrim]

The American media is capitalizing on the notion that the Greek Debt Crisis is happening because of bloated government wages to public employees. Apparently, the public sector is fully to blame with the workers bearing the brunt of the burden.

Anyone have any links on the debt crisis that negates the idea that the crisis was solely due to "overpaying" workers and public expenditures?

Nothing about this in particular, but I think it is a very standard practice all over the world to talk about greedy workers. I am not sure whether the arguing stat to stat is the way to go about having the argument. Maybe you should just try starting from the position that the whole argument is completely absurd.

Most workers who have been involved in a big struggle know this tactic from experience. The highest salary I have ever 'earned' was, according to the English daily 'The Sun' 3.2 times what I was actually earning.

Devrim

[RadioRaheem84]

Professional currency speculators are attacking the Euro and using the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) nations as a whipping boy to get them to roll back the extensive social welfare public programs. NOW, the F-ING IMF is at Greece's door. The words 'structural adjustment' have been used on a first world nation.

What we are witnessing is the same "structural adjustment programs" that the first world forced on the third world now coming to the weakest of the first world nations!

Everyone from Obama to the Greek President is calling for "austerity" in the PIGS nations, which basically translates to the working masses having to pay for the misguided investments by rich bankers, investors and their corrupt Government. This is the type of stuff they ask countries like Indonesia to do. Yet, were these not the "miracle" nations that came back in the 2000s, promoted by both left and right politicians as the pinnacle of success with their "sturdy" investments in price asset inflation?

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.philstockworld.com/2010/02/19/greek-spies-hot-on-the-trail-of-cds-speculators-who-singlehandedly-destroyed-greece/

Greeks tying the fall of Greece to four hedge funds and also John Paulson, the guy in hot water in the Goldman Sachs case with the SEC in the US.