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Responsible countries handle this through a simple legislated idea - personal bankruptcy; this is a political populist move not inspired by any actual reasoning into effects of this on economy. Not that I think effect is of any serious impact, for anyone. This move is exactly of the category that is crippling Croatia. We (yes, a Croat here) are in a bit of a pickle, and let me explain the core of the it... Even excluding astonishing amount of pensioners (many from previous regime) and war-inflicted disabled persons (whose actual condition is matter to be looked upon suspiciously) and other non-working class of people, work-force segments into two distinct categories - directly or indirectly dependant on the goverment as source of income, and the good "old" private sector. The trouble here is that former is riddled with catastrophic inefficiency, corruption and evades competitive market, and the latter carries the burden of former. The issue is - in democratic elections, majority wins, and the former here is the majority. So we keep up with this cancerous tumor of goverment-dependants who won't ever vote for someone who'll put a stop to it (hey, they're not crazy, why would they vote against their immediate interests), and violently cut it out of the system. Maybe, and just maybe (haven't crunched the numbers), within a generation, when few factors align (war-disabled die off, unemployed numbers increase even more), the actual critical mass of value-adding work-force outweighs the tumor, brighter days await us. And even that is under assumption there will be an election choice that'll be catalyst for those changes at that point. I personally don't hold an optimist view. Hell, even our geographical geometric shape looks unstable and unnatural. War ended by higher powers putting a stop to it, not resolution. And as far as EU membership goes - meh, we're again at the age-old role of a border country as a proxy for keeping the region stable and keeping the muslims out. Important role, but hardly grateful. Not to end on a completely sour note - I did notice a sentiment of unity last few years. Particulary noted during holiday sales (or the lack of excessive spending), people seem to coalesce in misery, slowly perceiving that we're in this shit together, unlike during last two decades, where they would aspire beyond means, due to many factors including prominence of war-profiteers. Like my grandma said: "It was never worse here during my lifetime. After WWII at least everyone was poor." |