[holoto]

In Germany many people live from going through garbage, you can see them everywhere in large cities. Kids from poor people need to be fed buy the Church. Pensions and social benefits were cut over the last decade, people need to work until 67 to get a pension, unemployment benefits do practically no longer exist in Germany. Germany has the lowest amount of house owners and private wealth.

But Germans should pay for Greece?

[euccastro]

No, German banks that made foolish investments should have taken the losses, so the German people wouldn't have to bail them out by proxy.

[taliesinb]

First, let's explode the idea of parity: German median income is almost twice that of Greece. Greeks work longer and have fewer holidays. The average age of Greek retirement is actually higher than Germany's. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/world-affairs/2012/05/expl... for more of the same.

So already the popular notion that hard-working Germans tax-payers are actually paying for those lazy, feckless Greeks is wrong. It also has nasty racist and fascist undertones, but let's put that aside.

Furthermore, it gets the causality backwards: the labor rollbacks and public cuts inflicted on German workers created the surplus that German banks speculatively invested in dubious Greek enterprises and Spanish construction projects in the 2000s.

Broadly, through the 2000s, Germany embraced neoliberalism, labour got squeezed, profits shot up, and a surplus accumulated. That surplus then needed a place to invest.

Those investments went to, among other dubious places, the (famously) fiscally irresponsible Greek government and corrupt Greek enterprises.

But investment isn't aid, of course. There's no gift. German banks were betting on a return when they loaded Greece and other countries up with debt. Of course a creditor nation also enjoys many political privileges over its debtors, so German politicians were happy, too.

Better yet, that same capital flow was being recycled back into German manufacturing by inflating demand for German exports from those countries! Living beyond their means often meant buying German goods! A giant circulation machine had formed that helped the Germany economy nearly double in 10 years.

In 2008, the slow slide of Italy, Spain, Greece, etc. into the status of 'debtor nations' was brought to a halt by the liquidity crisis. Everyone stopped fantasizing about endless debt-fueled growth. Germany banks and the ECB became more cautious. The circulation halted, and the Greek, Spanish, Italian economies, which distorted by malinvestment and terrible bubbles, collapsed.

Now we see the vulturism of austerity. You know, at one point in 2012 Germany actually proposed replacing the Greek budget and tax functions wholesale -- what else of a country's polity is left? That's economic occupation.

So, to sum up, we have the perverse situation where the banks which caused the crisis are being bailed out by the citizens of a country whose economy was wrecked by the same capital flows the banks mishandled! The Germans citizens aren't bailing out the Greeks citizens. The Greek citizens are bailing out the German banks that lent money to corrupt Greek politicians, by endlessly renewing all that toxic debt that rightly should be written off.

Of course, this should sound familiar, because it happened first in the US in 2008. Again, banks won, ordinary people paid dearly.

Beware the narrative about Germans paying for Greek mistakes. It's wrong, quite disgustingly wrong, and the truth is almost the exact opposite.

[twobits]

"But Germans should pay for Greece?"

There is no "germany" and no "greece". A german person, is not the deutsche bank. Likewise, a greek person, is not the greek national bank. "Germany vs greece", is just a simple "we vs them" plot, to hide the banks between the mass of the people.

What is happening is that ALL european tax payers, are essentially paying for the german and french banks.

[peterfirefly]

Or to really hammer the point home: Slovaks should pay for Greece? Estonians should pay for Greece?

That Greece's voting rights in the EU haven't been suspended yet is a travesty. I hope it will happen soon (and that Macedonia finally will be allowed to call itself Macedonia!) and that confiscations of Greek property to pay for the loans will follow.

Or maybe we could sell Greece back to the Turks? ;)

[taliesinb]

You seem quite happy with the idea of a country being sold, and its citizens denied the right of democracy, 2500 years after having invented it.

[peterfirefly]

The jurisdiction of the Greek government does not extend to Germany or Slovakia or Estonia. The Greek voters do not have a say in what the governments of those countries must do. The voters of Germany, Slovakia, and Estonia do. That's how democracy works.

(And your voting rights in the EU /can/ actually be suspended, quite legally. There are obligations you have to live up to -- and if you don't, you don't get to have a vote.)