Today I heard a dutch housemate of mine saying that in Greece people retire at the age of 53 already.
Thanks to the media, mostly in Germany and Netherlands, North Europeans have an illusionary idea of the situation in Greece. They think that people retire at the age of 55 and get lots of extra salaries (16 I heard!!!) and have paradisal pensions. I also heard that there were 30 gym teachers on an island with 7 students. In that case of course they refuse to help financially.
However, the Greek situation is actually tragic:
- Greek people retire on average at the age of 61.5 and that's just above the EU average!
- The minimum Greek pension is 350 euros, the average Greek pension is 540 euros and 80% of the pensioners get a pension lower than 1000 euros.
- The salaries in Greece are 14 per year like the rest of Europe (were actually, since 1/5/2010 they are only 12).
- In each class in a Greek school there are 30 (sometimes more) pupils. And no teacher wants to go teach on an island. There are actually islands without schools and the pupils have to take the boat every day (imagine a winter storm in the sea) to go to school at another island.
My father will have 25% reduction in his pension and no raise for the next 3 (probably 5) years. The gasoline costed less than 1 euro per litre last year and now it costs more than 1.5 euros per litre. The VAT is now 23% (1 year ago it was 19%).
The Greek people are bleeding and the German and Dutch media have no respect for that! Instead they spread criminal lies and try to manipulate the Dutch and German population against the aid to Greece.
What aid?! When you borrow with 3% interest and you lend to Greece with 5% interest you make a profit of 2%!! That's not aid, that's an investment!
My fathers money go into your pockets and you still complain about it for God's sake!!!
PS: somebody also told me that probably the European countries that will help Greece will never ask those money back. I guess if that was the case, Greece wouldn't have the problem of the national debt in the first place, would it? I don't know any creditor that forgot to ask his money back...
PS2: For those who say that Greeks are lazy, I copy from wikipedia:
The Greek labor force totals 4.9 million, and it is the second most industrious between OECD countries, after South Korea.[34] The Groningen Growth & Development Centre has published a poll revealing that between 1995 and 2005, Greece ranked third in the working hours per year ranking among European nations; Greeks worked an average of 1,811 hours per year[35].
In 2007, the average worker made around 20 dollars per hour, similar to Spain and slightly more than half of average U.S. hourly income."
