The Greek government is trying to limit the reactions and stop its political decline, both in society and in the occasional opinion polls. And from a political point of view, it is doing well, because otherwise Greek society will try to find an alternative to radical left parties that are rising in the opinion polls. In addition, its benefit policy relieves specific social classes, because people need the money, even if their money does not last until the end of the month.
However, we should recall what the current Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, then, on May 18, 2017: “What do you want in the end? To finish the economy with outrageous surpluses so that you can have a small benefit policy?”
No one can complain when the Prime Minister gives money, but there are two issues.
1. Where did he get the money? From the huge budget surplus, he says – and where did he get the huge budget surplus? From what he took from us with taxes, his enemies say.
2. Apart from what he gives as gifts to tenants and low-income pensioners (he indirectly tries to establish part of the 13th & 14th monthly pension that was abolished due to memoranda, while he does something similar with the indirect imposition of the 13th & 14th monthly salary to public employees, through increases and productivity bonuses, making these benefits permanent), should he also take any measures to improve the business environment so that some investment can be made and production can increase? Because no matter how large a fiscal surplus it generates, no matter how much growth the country has, the money does not stay in Greece, all of it is consumed and even more is consumed in imports. Because Greece has no production. And there will be no production since it is not profitable to produce anything in Greece. In order for it to be profitable, the Greek state, which is the biggest obstacle, needs to change. And only Mitsotakis had the ideological background to do this, but he did not do it, so as not to harm the interests of both his party and the client corrupt Greek state.
Will he do it now, while the popularity of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is falling, will he dare to make changes that harm people and the clients of the party state? Of course not, he will not do it. Just as no other reform will do, because these things happen when the government is fresh and strong. Now it is not fresh, nor is it strong.
So the Greek economy will continue to flounder in the midst of an international storm, at least until the elections. And probably after the elections things will get even worse, because whatever government is elected will be weak and in no way reformist (not even Mitsotakis himself or hiw party New Democracy).
- If the waste of the “obese” cumbersome, insatiable, omnivorous, and in general corrupt, public sector is not reduced.
- If new privatizations are not carried out.
- If the tax burdens on the private productive sector, which is the engine of economic growth, are not drastically reduced.
- If the parasitic tax evasion of freelancers is not tackled.
- If large foreign investments do not come, with special tax breaks, to the productive sector to build new large factories and industries.
- If the anachronistic permanence of civil servants is not abolished, after an objective and non-partisan evaluation,
Greece is not going to progress to get closer to the other European countries that have escaped far ahead.
Heavy, rusty left-wing “ideological chains” keep Greece bound, since the beginning of socialism in 1981, in the worst position in Europe in everything. In public debt (158% of GDP, a global negative record), in purchasing power, in unemployment, in productivity, in competitiveness, in current account deficit, etc. The hopeless thing is that the alternative government solutions and proposals are much worse than the government and even more regressive, more socialist, more Soviet.
