Euro is a disaster for countries that do everything right

[Thanas]

Then it should be rather easy to find multiple isolated instances of it, no? I mean, if we are going to be intellectually honest and all that. I can easily pull up numbers of people contributing to US senators etc, should be easy to find the same instances of German policy makers acting in the manner claimed above.

[Dominus Atheos]

when you can make policy on the basis of stereotypes about the Greeks being lazy scrounging welfare addicted tax avoiders who all retire at 50 to spend time in their private swimming pools drinking ouzo.

Could you show where this is happening?

Here's a poll from 2012:



http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... eu/257764/

But you are right, it's really hard to find stories calling greeks lazy, but really easy to find stories debunking greeks as lazy. Here's the results for the query "lazy greeks" on the american Google site:

Greek bailout talks: Are stereotypes of lazy Greeks true ...

Greeks work harder than Germans. Who knew? - The ...

Are Greeks lazy? - Quora

Greek Debt Crisis: Don't Blame Laziness. Greeks Work ...

Corrupt, lazy Greeks? Debunking Ethnic Stereotyping ...

Lazy Greeks at Fault?? These Two Charts Suggest Otherwise!

There's clearly a "Lazy Greeks" meme in existence, but off of twitter it's seemingly impossible anyone actually saying it.

[Simon_Jester]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... eu/257764/

It would appear that the Spanish, the Greeks, the Poles, the Italians, and the Czechs all believe their respective homelands to be the most corrupt nations in Europe.

They can't all be right, I'll say that much.

There's clearly a "Lazy Greeks" meme in existence, but off of twitter it's seemingly impossible anyone actually saying it.

Trouble is, as noted, it's also difficult to find the Bush administration on record saying Saddam Hussein caused the September 11th attacks... and yet somehow enough people wound up believing it that "revenge for 9/11" influenced the level of support Americans had for starting the second Iraq War.

It's difficult to find major media outlets in the US that proclaim "all young black males are criminals..." and yet somehow a lot of whites somehow get the idea that this is the case. Here we can look at examples where if a African-American is accused of a crime, then the 'blackness' of the suspect is played up. You can't point to any one thing done by any one media outlet and say "this is blatantly racist," or at least you can't necessarily do that. But it happens.

So the question is, how did this meme of "lazy Greeks" ever become a public twittery thing in the first place? Sure, no credible media outlet is saying "the Greeks are lazy" as such. But it's very much possible to shape the way you describe someone to convey the impression "they're lazy and greedy and entitled" without ever coming out and saying it. This can be either a deliberate thing, or a non-deliberate thing, but it happens anyway.

[Dominus Atheos]

Interesting graph:



What's the difference between Sweden and Finland? Finland has the Euro since 1999, Sweden doesn't...

[Flameblade]

Interesting graph:



What's the difference between Sweden and Finland? Finland has the Euro since 1999, Sweden doesn't...

That's not exactly a fair comparison, though. Finland's economy relied rather heavily on a single company (Nokia) that got blasted out of the water in recent years (the iPhone).

[His Divine Shadow]

Not that heavily...

[Simon_Jester]

Not to the tune of, oh, 7 or 8% of GDP, is what you're saying?

[madd0ct0r]

1.6% in 2006, according to Wiki. Same article suggest 16% of exports. Not sure if that include mico-silica-fume, which was a side product of silicon chip manufacturer, and is necessary component for most modern high grade cements. Finland supplied most of the european construction industry with it.

Point being that I'm not sure what the mutliplier would be on the Nokia dollar within the GDP. There's a lot of non-obvious links outside that %

[His Divine Shadow]

It's not like all of Nokia went down either, only the mobile unit which we did sell, and looking at it recently in the hands of MS... we sold it for more than what it was worth.

Anyway the economic maialise of the last 10 years or so, is to me just the final and inevitable culmination of 40-50 years of globalization. Industry and well paying jobs for the working and middle class have steadily gone away and been replaced with lesser paying service sector jobs and the job replacement rate has been far from 100% as well. We're just getting poorer,, we've been offsetting this by making cheaper, crappier consumer goods overseas as well as taking loans and credit, and oh lookie GDP and all that is going up (but mostly it's been going to the top, ignore that part citizen, don't be a commie and steal from the ~*job creators*~). Also have you noticed how all the taxation has moved away from progressive income taxation to various regressive consumption taxes. At least it has here, and ironically it's been driving people rightwards, to the cause of the very thing they are angry about.

This whole sham of an economic system is unraveling, it worked as long as we had a society to dismantle and sell off and could race each other to the bottom while shouting "wooo!", but when we're approaching the bottom things must eventually stop.

From what it looks like to me, is a return to the status quo for most of human history, 99% people in poverty, the rest in luxury and with all the political power.

[Vendetta]

1.6% in 2006, according to Wiki. Same article suggest 16% of exports. Not sure if that include mico-silica-fume, which was a side product of silicon chip manufacturer, and is necessary component for most modern high grade cements. Finland supplied most of the european construction industry with it.

Point being that I'm not sure what the mutliplier would be on the Nokia dollar within the GDP. There's a lot of non-obvious links outside that %

That kind of export trade is exactly the thing which is hurt by Euro membership though. Because the Euro is more valuable than a seperate Finnish currency would be, Finnish materials exports (see also: timber) are more expensive than other countries and nobody buys them.

[Patroklos]

when you can make policy on the basis of stereotypes about the Greeks being lazy scrounging welfare addicted tax avoiders who all retire at 50 to spend time in their private swimming pools drinking ouzo.

Could you show where this is happening?

Here's a poll from 2012:



http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... eu/257764/

But you are right, it's really hard to find stories calling greeks lazy, but really easy to find stories debunking greeks as lazy. Here's the results for the query "lazy greeks" on the american Google site:

Greek bailout talks: Are stereotypes of lazy Greeks true ...

Greeks work harder than Germans. Who knew? - The ...

Are Greeks lazy? - Quora

Greek Debt Crisis: Don't Blame Laziness. Greeks Work ...

Corrupt, lazy Greeks? Debunking Ethnic Stereotyping ...

Lazy Greeks at Fault?? These Two Charts Suggest Otherwise!

There's clearly a "Lazy Greeks" meme in existence, but off of twitter it's seemingly impossible anyone actually saying it.

In the US the gist that comes to us across the pond is that they have a very generous pension system that is awarded after too little work and supported by too little collectable taxes due to government corruption and citizens dodging them. I have no idea how accurate that is. I found this source and while from my cursory examination it shows Greeks are generous with pensions nothing jumps out at me as overly so. I didn't see any single metric that wasn't shared somewhere else.

Lots of info for all OECD countries regarding pensions and retirement:

http://www.oecd.org/pensions/public-pen ... ce2013.pdf