[nske]

> The Greek government allowed this

To understand the tax mentality of Greeks, it's worth pointing that not a single Greek government existed in modern history that didn't have multiple corruption scandals and blatant misspending/mismanagement incidents come to light. And only a small percentage of those incidents probably ever came into light. The last two generations got used to knowing that tax money vanish into a black hole, needless public sector hires, ridiculous under-the-table contracts, etc, all while the public health system was suffering to the extent that bribing the doctors to receive decent service became the norm. That practice extended everywhere: you'd bribe for your driving license or you'd likely fail even if you did everything right, you'd bribe the tax inspectors or you'd face fines even if everything was in order, etc. Not saying that this makes tax evasion a good thing but it does feed some interesting thoughts about how hard it is to change a system that keeps mishandling tax money while failing the people and how the natural urge of the people in these cases is to just avoid contributing into it however they can.

[village-idiot]

Indeed. As I said, nobody came out looking clean.

I think the kindest thing you could say is that the Greek populace basically gave up on good governance and decided to make do with what they had, which is kind of damning with faint praise.