This week Aditya Chakrabortty has chosen a comment from a reader in Athens about the austerity of daily life in Greece
In a new series, Comment is free writers and editors want to highlight some of the best comments on the site. Each week, either an editor or the author of a recent piece will pick a comment that they think contributes to the debate. We'll get in touch with the commenter and ask them to expand a little on their post, as well as tell us some more about themselves. Hopefully, it will give staff and readers an opportunity to see how thought-provoking such contributions can be and allow great posts the chance to be seen by a wider audience.
In our fifth instalment of the series, Aditya Chakrabortty has picked a comment found below his piece on austerity in Greece. The comment is by sovjohn:
"I'm surely late to this discussion. Apologies. I would just like to post a teeny bit of sobering material for your amusement(?): there's no dispute about Greece being, in part, a basket case, as aptly mentioned in this article. As a Greek citizen, I was appalled to find out that the Greek state did not know (!) or ignored even, exactly how many public sector employees were on its payroll. And it's not the only thing that nobody ever bothered with.
Corruption in the state (and in private sector doing business with it, spilling over everywhere)? Check. Incompetent politicians? Check. Self-entitled pensioners, employees, etc, believing it'd be "just" to get a state pension of exactly how much they made while working – despite the probability that they will live for 20+ years on this pension? Check.
Banks which kept strict standards in micro and small business loans and financing tools, but bankrolled faithfully "friends in high places", reaching to events such as an average private TV station owing more than half a billion euros when it went bankrupt, without proper due diligence? Check.
A tax-evasive culture prevalent? Check. (Although in Greece's defence, PAYE is in place for all salaried individuals, and it's not that easy to escape taxes if you want to do legitimate business. Try walking into any company employing more than one or two individuals and asking to be paid "under the table" – it's just not going to happen without invoices etc, as is the case anywhere really). Many checks. All right – very many checks.
The thing is though, many people never saw any direct benefits from the above. They had to battle through a private sector mentality of "work as many hours as the boss likes, no overtime pay ever, except if you work in a call centre or something. What 40-hour week? Ha! If you dare to bring in the authorities, you're insta-fired!" And the state bureaucracy – horrible, as it's horrible everywhere. But picture this: even today, most of the "certificates" and "declarations" and "records" among various state agencies are still not shared between them. The paperwork needed to carry out even simple tasks is astonishing.
Let's say you are disabled. In many cases, you still have or had to present yourself every two years to a state agency, with eye-watering paperwork, of course, to just convince the state you are still disabled. This is not the case anymore, but even this still applies to very many cases.
People pay very high health and pension contributions to the state funds, with no quality of service to speak of. Plus, even in 2013, the contributions are the same as in 2008, if not more. There's a catch, though: state pensions are already 30% smaller, and they will become even smaller after 2015. Tough luck. There are no "individual accounts" in place, so the state pays you whatever it wants – when and if you get a pension.
What the fuck is somebody supposed to do about this mess, exactly? Pray tell. You need €250 (rent) + €60 (electricity and council tax) + €30 (landline/internet/mobile) + say €50 (heating in winter) + €150(?) food + €50 for public transport. I did not include: clothing, entertainment, smoking, alcohol, any vice at all, debt of any kind, holidays (ha!), a car or motorcycle (ha, ha, ha!).
The minimum wage is below these numbers, at approximately €510 a month. If you are "skilled" you might get €700 – €1,000 and more is a huge luxury now. Of course, if you are 50 years old and still working (are you?), you might net €1,200 or €1,500, but "pre-crisis" this was double. And you surely had debt: a mortgage, your children's costs. Now, living on €1,200 with a family of three or four puts you right at the same misery of a national minimum wage earner.
Benefits? None remaining. Stipends? Nothing. A great tax-free personal income allowance? Nope – everything over €5,000 a year is taxed. Let's say you are 20 years old today. Or 25 or 30 or 35. Apart from somehow launching a niche business of your own and living off it, what else can you do? You may be a sharp fellow or lass. But still, try getting paid for it. Ha.
You enjoy this mess? Talk to your local Greek embassy and volunteer to swap places with a Greek for a month. Once you get back home, you'll be thanking God / a higher power / whoever that you are not in their shoes. And you can take that to the bank, dear naysayers. Saludos."
Aditya explains why he chose this comment:
"John tweeted Graeme Wearden and me about his comment: 'Apologies, it's a bit long, but most of my CIF comments usually are. Enjoy responsibly!'
He's right: it is a bit long, but I do enjoy it. What I most enjoy in comments is not the ones that clap you on the back (although, you know, no one spurns a compliment), but the ones that try and engage with the argument and add something to it. This comment does that: John gives telling detail of what life is like for ordinary Greeks. Much of what he says chimes with what other Greeks told me when I was reporting there a couple of years ago: that rage against corrupt politicians and time-serving officialdom. And it's surely justified as is John's anger at the failures of the private sector.
It's really important for people to be reminded that, whatever the stereotype of the lazy, subsidy-addicted Greece, a lot of ordinary Greeks were not high on euros during the boom – and they are suffering now. Can I also give a special mention to kizbot, who again provides good detail – and in argument gives as good as she gets."
Sovjohn explains his reasons for commenting on Aditya's piece, and tells us a bit about himself:
Have you commented before?
Yes, I tend to visit the eurozone crisis rolling blog quite often, as well as certain other features which interest me from time to time, mostly around the business and Europe sections.
When did you start commenting?
I have commented on Cif and generally interacted with Guardian staff covering areas of my interest since mid-2011 or so, and especially so in early-mid 2012 when the eurozone (and Club Med) crisis seemed to have reached new heights.
How would you describe the community of commenters you find here?
Speaking for the parts which I read most frequently, I believe that a large extent of the community (and I do not count the so-called "trolls" within them) is very knowledgeable and well-suited for debate. I must make special mention of comments such as kizbot and Helianthe who add particular flair to comments in the sections I follow. They are not the only ones, but I can remember their IDs without looking them up. I must add that when the comments format changed in 2012 I abstained for quite some time, and only came back when I found a browser plug-in which enabled me to read and contribute to debates once more. I am stating this merely because I saw good members of the community abstaining as well, and it was a sad period of time.
Why did you feel motivated to comment on this piece?
The article stated an obvious yet inconvenient truth: the EU and Greece attempted to carry out an "optimism attack" to justify their policies during the crisis. I wholeheartedly agree that Greece as a country needed a good shake-up, but things have gone too far. And people having no relation to the country cannot possibly know that hospitals ask patients to bring along bandages and sheets because they have none. There are literally hundreds of little stories to be told about the plight of the country, and this article was spot-on in highlighting the difference between spreadsheets and reality.
Of course, once a free fall ends, ascension begins, however I do not believe that stemming the tide of unemployment and poverty will take anything less than decades, really, unless a miracle presents itself. I disagree with the handling of the crisis at an EU level and believe that a "not-in-my-back-yard" syndrome of countries facing little or no financial woes did not urge them to take the right steps to maintain a minimum of social protection for the hardest-hit countries.
In regards to your comment highlighted here, do you feel you changed the conversation or moved the debate on?
This particular comment came long after the debate and conversation started, and thus I do not believe it will be sufficiently read and pondered upon, which is why I generally try to post my always-lengthy comments as early as possible. But one or two days is a very long time in internet terms, so I do not really mind in this case, I just provided some food for thought.
Where are you in the world?
I run a start-up web and technology service in Ireland, which resulted from the merger of two similar companies, so I travel there frequently, but "ordinarily reside" in Athens, Greece.
• Let us know your thoughts on this exchange in the comments below, and tell us whether it has given you a new insight into the situation in Greece.
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