Victor Davis Hanson: Greek Tragedies
[Mr. Hanson, who lived in Greece for two years, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the recently released "The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern," as well as "Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom."]
Draping the Acropolis with a hammer-and-sickle banner might seem a stupid public relations stunt—especially as a bankrupt Greece seeks to reassure foreign capitalist investors to save Hellenic socialism.
But then the news coming out of Greece these days gets a little more bizarre each day—fire-bombings, murders, riot, and mass shutdowns of all government services. All this chaos, of course, is streamed live to the world on the eve of the life-saving tourist season.
Indeed, no one can quite figure out the Greek enigma. Necessary austerity measures may well ensure recession. Yet any slowdown precludes enough economic growth to pay off exorbitant public debt. High interest is necessary to attract risk-prone investors, but will probably ensure that some $140 billion in loans—over $12,000 for every Greek in the country—can never be wholly serviced. Strikes and demonstrations come at just the time when workers need to be more productive on the job. Greek officials talk of reducing, not eliminating, annual deficits, at a time when budget surpluses, not further borrowing, are needed to restore financial sanity.
And the more the world learns about the peculiar financial culture of this tiny nation of 11 million—14 monthly pay periods, a retirement system that can be conned to draw pensions in one's 50s, endemic tax-cheating—the more it is baffled by the fiery rioting and protests of those in the streets who want others to ensure they keep getting their bonuses.
Greece, of course, is not quite unique. Britain and the United States are running historically unprecedented peacetime deficits and imploding their retirement and health care systems. In California, we see the same Greek phenomenon of extravagantly paid and pensioned public employees demanding higher taxes from a shrinking private sector that is fleeing an overtaxed state.
Elsewhere in Europe, sun and socialism are having a rough go of it as well in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The late-night dinner, the double commute to ensure siestas, and a laid-back "tomorrow" joy of living seem to lead both to lower worker productivity and greater claims on entitlements.
All that said, the violent reaction to bad news in Greece is unique. But it is not so surprising given Greece's own turbulent past. Hundreds of insular valleys, 6,000 islands, and jagged coastlines, often cut off by mountains, help to explain the original emergence of 1,500 independent city-states rather than a unified nation—and a fierce tradition of agrarian independence as well as the birth of democracy. Given the mountainous Balkans and a prominent position in the southeastern Mediterranean, a European Greece itself was always especially vulnerable to the whims of the great, and usually hostile, eastern empires...
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Draping the Acropolis with a hammer-and-sickle banner might seem a stupid public relations stunt—especially as a bankrupt Greece seeks to reassure foreign capitalist investors to save Hellenic socialism.
But then the news coming out of Greece these days gets a little more bizarre each day—fire-bombings, murders, riot, and mass shutdowns of all government services. All this chaos, of course, is streamed live to the world on the eve of the life-saving tourist season.
Indeed, no one can quite figure out the Greek enigma. Necessary austerity measures may well ensure recession. Yet any slowdown precludes enough economic growth to pay off exorbitant public debt. High interest is necessary to attract risk-prone investors, but will probably ensure that some $140 billion in loans—over $12,000 for every Greek in the country—can never be wholly serviced. Strikes and demonstrations come at just the time when workers need to be more productive on the job. Greek officials talk of reducing, not eliminating, annual deficits, at a time when budget surpluses, not further borrowing, are needed to restore financial sanity.
And the more the world learns about the peculiar financial culture of this tiny nation of 11 million—14 monthly pay periods, a retirement system that can be conned to draw pensions in one's 50s, endemic tax-cheating—the more it is baffled by the fiery rioting and protests of those in the streets who want others to ensure they keep getting their bonuses.
Greece, of course, is not quite unique. Britain and the United States are running historically unprecedented peacetime deficits and imploding their retirement and health care systems. In California, we see the same Greek phenomenon of extravagantly paid and pensioned public employees demanding higher taxes from a shrinking private sector that is fleeing an overtaxed state.
Elsewhere in Europe, sun and socialism are having a rough go of it as well in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The late-night dinner, the double commute to ensure siestas, and a laid-back "tomorrow" joy of living seem to lead both to lower worker productivity and greater claims on entitlements.
All that said, the violent reaction to bad news in Greece is unique. But it is not so surprising given Greece's own turbulent past. Hundreds of insular valleys, 6,000 islands, and jagged coastlines, often cut off by mountains, help to explain the original emergence of 1,500 independent city-states rather than a unified nation—and a fierce tradition of agrarian independence as well as the birth of democracy. Given the mountainous Balkans and a prominent position in the southeastern Mediterranean, a European Greece itself was always especially vulnerable to the whims of the great, and usually hostile, eastern empires...