You didn’t have to be smart, brilliant, wise, educated, or an economist to understand that the “Greek Miracle” would have an expiration date and soon and tragically so.
Those who were elementally prudent and those who were not blinded by too much and easy money watched with horror and anguish the changes in Greek society over the past decades:
- Too much money from nowhere (From where? From loans. Lots of loans!)
- Lots of obstacles to entrepreneurship
- Too many laws and bureaucracy
- Kickbacks, envelopes (fakelaki) everywhere
- Deconstruction of education at all levels
- Poverty and nihilism in everything related to the nation, the homeland and patriotism
- Non-existence of an immigration policy. (Entry of millions of illegal immigrants. The vast majority siphon off economic resources offering only violence, crime, population alteration and disease.)
- Corruption and fraud in anything related to subsidies from the European Union (agricultural production, investments, development infrastructure, educational seminars)
- Promotion and deification of nothingness and nullification of labor and productive forces
- Lies from politicians and ear-caressing
- Hundreds of thousands of Greeks who, working in the public sector, have learned to be lazy, to be richly paid and to have only rights without obligations
- A bloated public sector that does not produce, but only consumes valuable resources (a liability in economics)
- Burying the many efforts to create and produce in Greece (Yes! There were and are.)
- Low quality tourist services combined with exorbitant fees
- Political parties with AFMs and commercial activities, denying control, firing workers while closing roads and ports on the side for the worker’s right
- A health care that while you pay for it through taxes, you have to pay for it again in private practices or in vouchers
- An education that while you pay for it, you have to pay for it again in tutorials and private schools so that your children have so little hope of learning something
- Lack of morals
- Lack of goals
- Lack of vision
All these and more have led Greece to be on the edge of the cliff today. One step closer to formal bankruptcy. The real bankruptcy is already here.
Greece has been on a holiday for many decades. And idleness is the mother of all evil
Here we are, and with the mindset that has infused society, change and a return to reality, to the real economy, will not be painless, nor easy.
- We will have to do a reset on the will, the can, the am able
- Rediscover core values
- Forget about easy profit
- Relearn to work and rely on what we produce
As an epilogue (in a topic that does not end just like that), I thought that the Aesop’s fable “George and his Children” shows the way Greece and Greeks should choose to move from now on. Let the suffering become lessons.
The farmer and his Children (Aesop’s Myth)
Once a farmer became seriously ill. Every day he got worse and worse. Then he realized that his end was near and called his two sons to him, who were strong and sturdy lads but had one great fault: laziness.
So in a weak and weary voice he said to them:
– ‘My sons, I am now leaving this world and I leave in your hands all that I have. I have worked as hard as I could. Now it is your turn to work so that all that I am leaving you will not be lost. So in the vineyard I have left you my entire fortune. I have hidden the treasure very well but it is worth the effort you will make to find it because it will make you rich.
But be careful.
It will be yours only if you find it without spoiling the vines from the vineyard.
And one more thing: distribute him fairly…
And with these words he bade farewell to his children.
The children went through days of sorrow. Their father’s last words kept coming back to them.
So one fine morning in early spring, they took a pair of saws and a pair of pruning shears and set off for the vineyard.
So when they got to the vineyard they looked around for a long time. But there was no sign that the treasure could be there.
– I think we should dig deep into the vineyard. So wherever it is, we’ll find it, said one of them.
– So let’s not waste time, said the second.
With their hoes they dug deep into the earth and turned it over.
– The branches are blocking us, said one of them.
– Let’s prune them, said the other.
Continuing like this they came to the end. They dug the last hole, but the treasure was gone! Disappointed, they returned home…
Time passed, Summer came and then Autumn. It was the season to harvest and the two brothers set off again for the vineyard.
But there, with great surprise they saw the sticks with so many grapes touching the earth!
They joyfully began to cut the grapes, fill the baskets and pile them into the presses. His harvest this year was… treasure!
They sold the grapes and others made wine and sold that too. And they would take money, save it on the table and distribute it fairly, as their father had told them.
So they may not have found treasure, but their labors were more than repaid!
Tags: AGRICULTURE • BANKRUPTCY • FARMER • FIELD • GREECE • GREEKS • MYTH
