Greece: Then and Now, Part 4
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| Mary Wakefield Buxton |
by Mary Wakefield Buxton
Urbanna, Va.— The highlight of the Athens trip was a special event hosted by the Athens Bar to welcome the Virginia Bar with a reception, lunch and program to explain how Greece’s economy had collapsed. The blue ribbon panel included the president of the Chamber of Commerce, members of the local bar, several members of the Greek Parliament, an assistant to the head of Department of Justice, and a businessman. They all offered their diverse thoughts about the problem.
“We have a soviet economy in Greece and taxes are outrageously high!” said one business lawyer. “No one would think of doing business in Greece until we have tax reform!” He told us taxes took half of a businessman’s profits and, on top of that, he had to face the 23% VAT (value added tax) and then pay social security taxes. The taxes were so high they discouraged business.
“The public sector is far too big,” was another’s opinion. Greece, we were told, had one million public employees to serve 10 million people which, along with salaries, pensions and benefits, has become an unsustainable overhead for taxpayers to fund.
“Too many lawyers!” one lawyer reported to much laughter from the Virginia lawyers, as he explained there were 25,000 working in Athens alone, which is more than NYC, Paris and London combined. How to cut back on a glut of lawyers?
A member of Parliament complained Greece was collapsing under its own bureaucracy and reported an entrepreneur recently had built a golf club and ended up having to collect 2,000 signatures on permits to complete the job.
She also reported “insane bureaucratic rules” were strangling the economy. For example, a cruise ship that did not fly the Greek flag could not start and finish a cruise in Greece, which prevented many wonderful cruise lines from bringing tourists into Greece. Such rules may protect unions but they harmed the overall economy.
Corruption by the bureaucracy was another problem another reported. One could not drive in the “center city” unless the license plates (odd or even number) matched an odd or even day of the month. Citizens had to keep two cars and pay a bureaucrat (under the table?) to get one car issued an “even” license number and another car an “odd” license number so they could drive every day in the city.
“Public employees have forgotten they are public servants and supposed to be taking care of us,” one lawyer groused. “They won’t even answer the telephone at the courthouse anymore; they simply take the phones off the hook, and tell us we have to make trips over to see them if we want service.”
We Virginians listened in silence. Had some of the Greek problems begun to surface in our own country? Would our nation follow in Greece’s footsteps?
What to do when a nation’s government itself becomes unaffordable? How do you cut back on government jobs and largess? How do people who have grown to rely on government to take care of them learn self-responsibility and ween themselves from government benefits?
The great Frenchman, de Tocqueville, who wrote “Democracy in America,” first recognized the universal “Achilles’ heel” in a democracy. After visiting our young republic he wrote ominously that the American people would eventually realize they could vote themselves as much largess as they wished, without any regard to paying for it, and the nation would eventually be bankrupted.
After the program we headed for the National Gardens to take in the many specimens of trees and vegetation from the world over. In spite of the beauty that surrounded me, I could not forget the questions raised at the program. I worried the United States was on the same track of economic disaster. But what could be done to stem the current tides toward big government?
We headed for the Plaka neighborhood where we had been told one could strike bargains. We watched the tourists haggle over prices as if it were a game, but neither Chip nor I could do it. We paid full price. You might say you can take the Virginian out of Virginia, but you can’t take Virginia out of the Virginian.
On our return there was a crowd at the front of the hotel. “Papandreou is in the hotel swimming in our spa!” said someone with great excitement. “Would madame like to see Papandreou?” the doorman asked. I thought of the three generations in this family that had held power in Greece that had destroyed its economy and the suffering their policies had caused this great nation now (while they had probably retired on generous government pensions). No, madame would not want to see such a man. (To be continued.)
