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Recovery? 60% Of Greeks Live At Or Below Poverty Levels
While Greek government yields (and political leaders) proclaim the troubled peripheral European nation is 'recovering', the risk of major political upheaval in Greece has not gone away ahead of next year's presidential vote next year. As Reuters notes, under growing pressure from anti-bailout leftists, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras desperately needs a new narrative to get the backing of lawmakers and rally Greeks fed up with four years of austerity. We wish him luck as Keep Talking Greece notes, it is high time that the real data of the economic situation of the Greek society come to the surface and so it did this week. A report from Greece's State Budget Office found that three in every five Greeks, or some 6.3 million people, were living in poverty or under the threat of poverty in 2013 due to material deprivation and unemployment.
As we noted previously, poverty rates are disturbing in Greece
Four years after a messy descent into emergency funding to stave off bankruptcy, Greece’s government is trying to pull the plug on a deeply unpopular bailout program to secure its own survival.
Under growing pressure from anti-bailout leftists, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras desperately needs a new narrative to get the backing of lawmakers in a crucial presidential vote next year and rally Greeks fed up with four years of austerity.
It is a gamble with high stakes for the Greek economy and Athens’ relations with its euro zone peers. Failure by Samaras to get his presidential nominee elected would trigger new polls that his anti-austerity rivals would almost certainly win.
He better try hard as the situation is dismal... (as ekathimerini reports,)
Three in every five Greeks, or some 6.3 million people, were living in poverty or under the threat of poverty in 2013 due to material deprivation and unemployment, a report by Parliament’s State Budget Office showed on Thursday.
Using data on household incomes and living conditions, the report – titled “Minimum Income Policies in the European Union and Greece: A Comparative Analysis” – found that “some 2.5 million people are below the threshold of relative poverty, which is set at 60 percent of the average household income.” It added that “3.8 million people are facing the threat of poverty due to material deprivation and unemployment,” resulting in a total of 6.3 million people.
The State Budget Office’s economists who drafted the report argued that in contrast with other European countries “which implement programs to handle social inequalities, Greece, which faces huge phenomena of extreme poverty and social exclusion, is acting slowly.” They added that there is high demand for social assistance, while its supply by the state is “fragmented and full of administrative malfunctions.”
In that context “the social safety net is inefficient, while there is no prospect for the recovery of income losses resulting from the economic recession in the near future,” the report noted, reminding readers that the measure of the minimum guaranteed income “arrived in Greece belatedly.”
According to Eurostat Greece ranks top among the 28 European Union countries in terms of poverty risk and also has the highest poverty share in the population (23.1 percent). Greece also ranks fourth among EU states in poverty disparity, after Spain, Romania and Bulgaria.
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But, of course, none of that matters - bond yields are low and the ECB-collateralized cash is flowing.
As for Greece: don't cry for it - it still has the euro - that symbol of successful European integration - so all is well.
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Best to quickly pass one law making gasoline so expensive that the poor can't afford it and another banning the sale of lighters...
Hand out iPhone 6's and Kadashian DVD's and they will foget about all the other crap
Dude, they bombed the Kardashian's two weeks ago.
By mistake or were they actually attempting to do the American people a service?
Buy more puts.
Greek citizenry is not "live in poverty"... is "relax in poverty", like most of FSA.
The real FSA flourish and grow in the welfare state Boris.
BIG DIFFERENCE.
Damn.. back in the day when you got 30 Drachs to the buck and even though the junta ran things Greece was a great place to go to. (and the people seemed pretty happy).
Greece still has 40% of its population to go....
It is almost 2015. I think the number now is 40% of people in Greek is now in poverty, the remaining 60% of the people in Greek are Chinese from China, who bought all the properties and citizenship.
60% of Greeks in Greece may live below poverty level, but 95% of Greeks in the U.S.
live above poverty level because they are willing to work hard to get ahead.
You have a point there. I live in the US and I never met a Greek that wasn't successful.
Atlas Shrugged in Greece a long time ago. What remains is the wretched and stupid.
Redefine "poverty". Problem solved.
I keep telling you guys moar debt will fix this problem, but you won't listen.
~ I'm a bearded potato and I apprved this message.
Check your mail already, fer cryin' out loud.
Thanks Nodebt, got it. :)
Break dishes.
The numbers are dismal. A portion of the debt will have to be written off. It simply cannot be repaid. Then, they will have to focus on growth while being exceptionally careful not to recreate that monstrosity they had in the past (i.e. raising minimum wage to $15 overnight is not real growth)
This is the deal: The present gov't must find solutions quick because the left is promising the people that Europe will cave on the austerity issue and things will get better as a large portion of the burden will be lifted quickly. The left is presently 11 points ahead in the polls and is close to having numbers high enough that will allow them to form a gov't on their own.
So, I give this 6-9 months. Something has got to "give".
Timing doesn't mean shit to zombies. Zombie consumers. Zombie countries. Zombie banks. Zombie subprimes. Zombie Islamist. Zombie etc.
The undead walk until they can't.
Shot to lower cerebral cortex is fix all that for zombie citizenry.
The Greeks can go settle in Ukraine. I mean that is what they did a few thousand years ago. Land is cheap and very good for farming, the sheep will also love all that tall grass.
Mission Accomplished. Cheap serfs for the private islands.
USDJPY now playing with 110... life is good for the 0.001%
Greece should wait until the austerity measures put every Greek below the poverty level. That way they won't have to worry about much of anything.
That's the thing, if you noticed how the poverty level was set, you'd see what bullshit it was - and how impossible it would be for every Greek to be below it.
It's the old garbage in = garbage out magnified with malintent.
you are right, yet this is not the article's main thrust. see "As for Greece: don't cry for it - it still has the euro - that symbol of successful European integration - so all is well."
the position taken here is that if Greeks would give up on the EUR, they could devalue their Drachma down to... what? happiness and great wealth?
I strongly doubt the wisdom in this path, and a majority of Greeks does it too
What a really dishonest thing to say.
See, before the EUR the Greeks could compete against the Germans with a devalued currency, this did a number of things, it;
1) Encouraged foreign consumption of Greek products via reduced prices
2) Encouraged domestic consumption of Greek products via increased import prices
3) Discourage imported goods consumption
However, after the EUR the Greeks had to compete with the Germans 1:1. If they were similarly competitive to Germans then it would work out -- the problem, per the world economic forum last year Greece was 91 and Germany was 4.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2013-14/GCR_Rankings_2013-14.pdf
On a "level" playing field (being the EUR) the Germans will eat the Greeks alive, which is what is happening right now.
The Germans aren't doing anything wrong, nor are the Greeks doing anything wrong. The Germans are just being German and the Greeks are just being Greek. Trying to make the Germans more Greek or the Greeks more German to bridge this competitiveness gap is very Soviet, in that the "European"/"Soviet" peoples should give up their individual identity to create a new identity.
Scary stuff man. How can you possible be supportive of this?
Draghma
For those with the cash to spare, these are the best times to go holidaying in the greek isles.
you can have a dozen girls on the cheap, and greek girls ain't ugly.
I dont know if its true or not but i have read you can get some for 20 euros a night.
Not ugly. My good man did you see my big fat greek wedding film. I would hardly call her good looking. I have had many Greek friends. Never seen a good looking Greek girl in any of their families.
Presumably you're into blond bimbos.
Probably not, but we see that he understands the World based on what Hollywood tells him. I hate bitchez.
Those are not real homegrown greek females. They have the altered DNA ruined with ghetto booty mentality and increased fat levels due to BigMacs and KFCs consumption. More American than Greek I guess
America will have its own chart like this soon enough .
The cruel but neverthless truth is. They earn what they have seeded. The wages went through the roof, the corruption also and they expanded the bueraucracy beyone any reason. All with the "cheaper" money. The did not produce, they did not invest they consumed. You can just consume what you got + the things others give you, but who do expect getting something in return. Now the giving back was forgotten. And so they have to pay the consumption of futrue goods.
The truth will not be supressed for ever and the way of Greece is a sure warning on the ways in other countries. We Germans do have some advantages, but in the end if we have delivered good and do have accepted the promises of payment in the future, well then we have to cope with the not coming payments. BTW Germany has offically beyond 2.1 trillion of debts. And still the politician do as if the every will pay back. We're up for a harsh awakening as are the Greeks currently.
FUBAR is a way to friendly word for the mess we're in.
"The new measures won't bring any improvement for the economy inside the eurozone area and they know it. The economic elites and their political puppets will pursue a 'successful' completion of the experiment in Greece so that to expand it through the whole eurozone and this is their primary target. Empowering the real economy and especially small-medium businesses, reducing unemployment, will be catastrophic factors for the successful completion of the experiment, so these won't happen."
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/09/the-emperor-spoken-again.html
Accept this injustice and a 100% of Greeks deserve to live below the poverty line.
You get the leaders you deserve.
Would you care to add America, the UK, France, Spain and every other nation that has gorged itself on debt over the last decade or so?
is what happens to spendthrifts
Personal debts are not being serviced and therefore will not be paid.
Debts that cannot be paid will have to be written off and this implies haircuts for savers and bondholders.
The figures will become worse in Greece as time goes on because over the last 5-6 years the slide has been constrained a little by the fact that people have been using up their meagre savings to survive. Once those savings are exhausted it's the end of all the crap we have been witnessing.
By the way Samaras is on his way out either by his own hand or by someone in his own party.
Hitler II is coming. Only question is from which EU "austerized" country will it be?
Not terribly knowledgable on Greece... but given their very lax tax collection abilities historically, isn't their possibly a large black market (cash) labor market that skews these numbers...??
Not for one minute defending the role gangters like Draghi/GS played in this but Greeks for the most part brought it on themselves. They elect utterly corrupt politicians who line their own pockets and buy voters off with borrowed money. Few pay taxes and welfare is, or was, a feeding frenzy. To wit, there's one Greek island where every single adult is in receipt of a pension for the blind.
This headline is incorrect. Greeks can retire at 45 and get their benefits. They can still work as long as they don't make more then 15 thousand a year. So most of them work at the same job and get paid under the table. Same pay with GOVERNMENT BENNIES. Gaming the system bitches.