Myself and Kay had the privilege of living near the town of Nafplio in the Peloponnese region of Greece for four months earlier this year.
I say privilege because Greece is an incredible place, rich both in the natural beauty of the landscape and the ancient historical legacy all around you.
Given the troubles besetting Greece at the moment, we had wondered what sort of reception we would receive and had been warned in advance that there was a lot of anger, particularly in the capital, Athens. Such fears were unfounded. We felt welcomed everywhere and saw far more smiles than scowls. I think that speaks volumes about the resilient character of the Greek people. However, I’m not here to write a travel blog or do marketing on behalf of the Greek tourist board. Instead I feel compelled to speak out about what is happening there, out of a deep sense of concern for the future of this astonishing country.
Let me paint you a picture. I’m sitting at a table outside a taverna in a public square in town. It’s evening time and I’m relaxing with a glass of the local wine. What do I see? There’s a couple of guys selling these little toys that you catapult up into the air and then they float down on whirling sycamore like wings with bright flashing lights. They’re cheap to buy and a nice bit of harmless fun. Children are everywhere, running around playing games, riding their bikes to and fro. There’s lots of laughter, the occasional scraped knee but no harm done. Parents of the younger ones sit quietly to one side chatting to friends and spouses. The scene reminds me of growing up in the 60s and 70s in Britain. No knee pads, no cycle helmets, no clucking nanny state telling you it’s not safe to enjoy yourself. Just kids, confident and daring, having fun and learning to deal with the odd grazed elbow without making a big fuss. These children are loved and cherished, but not wrapped in cotton wool and pampered. I want to get every ‘health and safety’ nut who ever sought to limit our lives in stupid ways for the last 50 years and drag them to this plaza and say “Look! Look what you took away from our children in Britain! How dare you!”
But let us consider the future of these bright, brave children of Greece. They are born into a country that has been swept up in conflict after conflict, invaded, destroyed, split up and reconstituted over and over again in the last few hundred years. This country has been broken down and driven to its knees by outside powers. Then in recent times, we tongue lash them for their unaffordable welfare policies and lax attitudes to tax payments. While a country must live within its means, I do feel some sympathy for how they have ended up where they are, notwithstanding that they cannot continue in that way any longer. Back to the children. The rest of this letter is written with them in mind. What future will they have? What opportunities will there be for them. Do they have a chance at all? How can the answers to those three questions be changed from “Bleak”, “Few” and “No” to something more inspiring? Can we in the rich western world really continue to turn the screw and be so unforgiving?
In response to the utterly uncompromising attitude of the EU in setting down the requirements for bailing out the Greek economy, taxes are going up everywhere. Every sort of tax. I was speaking to the friend of an electrician there who reckoned that he retained no more than 20% of his business’ revenue after taxes and fees were paid. I can’t comment on how accurate that is, but we heard many others saying similar things and the impact of these taxes is obvious to anyone living there. Every shop and service provider will not simply be happy for you pay in cash (this is true the world over of course), but will explicitly offer you a very much lower price if you agree to pay in cash. They’re not being greedy, they’re not trying to avoid making their contribution to the country they live in, they are trying to survive. Whole streets of boarded up business premises abound in the towns and cities. The economy of this country is devastated. This is not a blip, or a recession. This is meltdown. The people are doing what they have to in order just to keep going at all.
There’s a good rule of thumb that applies to business as well as taxation.
It is much better to take a smaller slice of the cake, but work to enlarge the cake. Leave more cake for others to take as well, and they can work to enlarge it too. Together make a bigger and bigger cake. Then your modest percentage of the cake will become far greater in real terms than if you’d insisted on a big slice in the first place.
Greece needs to cut taxes and provide real, worthwhile incentives to businesses to open and expand. This is Economics 101. Business growth generates employment, tax revenue and creates demand for other businesses. It builds wealth and prosperity. You don’t have to be a rampant capitalist to understand this basic truth.
Everywhere you look in Greece, there are opportunities to create businesses. I could walk for an hour and spot 30 or 40, any day of the week. So am I blaming an EU imposed tax policy entirely for this apparent lack of entrepreneurialism? Well, no. I do believe that the approach of the EU in agreeing the Greek bail out was short sighted. I see no way in which Greece will not simply slump back into further debt and eventually become a failed state. The debt is unsustainable, and remember, it is the bright, brave and innocent children of Greece who will pay for that failure, not the generations before who ran up the debt.
However, the people of Greece need to change as well. It is hard to say this and I feel arrogant doing so. But I must. As I said at the start, these people have suffered mightily at the hands of other powers for centuries. I think that explains a lot about their attitude to life. In the UK for example, I grew up in a country that, despite two world wars, has known stability and a clear identity for hundreds of years, more than a millennia in fact. It gives you confidence in who you are and conviction in your ability to create something worthwhile in your life. The Greeks don’t have that. In order to deal with life in their bruised and battered land, they have adopted a fatalistic attitude. You hear it in their conversation. It is the approach of ‘what will be, will be’. They don’t feel empowered to change anything, so why bother trying?
How can this change? How can a new Greece be made from the ashes of the old? How can the people be helped to look up and rediscover the ingenuity that was the hallmark of their ancient ancestors?
As I’ve suggested already, the EU, IMF and other lenders need to get real. Greece will fail if they don’t remove the burden that is going to fall on the shoulders of innocents. If they can’t forgive it, then just defer it indefinitely. I don’t mean long terms and small payments, I mean put that debt away in a file marked ‘Do not open until Greece is a wealthy prosperous nation’. Get them back on their feet and building that big cake first. Then when they’re paving the streets with gold, you can say ‘Ahem, remember that file?’ It will be okay then because Greece will be in a position to start paying it down.
How can they save themselves?
The Greeks have to end their fatalism. They have to work hard and work smart. They gain nothing by laying the blame at the feet of outsiders, regardless of the justification. Greeks need to open their eyes to what has enabled the powerful countries of western Europe to become so rich.
Let me tell you the “Limes” story.
Thanks in part to the drug cartels of Mexico, there is an ongoing shortage of Limes in the world. The price skyrocketed a few years ago and it has remained high. Now let’s consider the Peloponnese region of Greece. It is a green and lush land, carpeted with orange and olive plantations. Even with an ongoing drought in this part of the Mediterranean, you’d be hard pushed to notice. You drive along roads between acres and acres of orange trees and see little stalls piled high with them every few miles, even baskets of free fruit left beside the fields for anyone to help themselves from. Now, the following conversation didn’t just happen once, it took place every single time we raised the subject.
Me: “Why don’t you grow Limes? It could be a great export market for you.”
Greek person: “Oh, we don’t use Limes here.”
This kind of face melting non sequitur leaves you gasping, not sure how to carry on the conversation. It speaks volumes about the Greek mentality unfortunately. Now, if every single Greek who responded in exactly the same way to my Limes proposition had instead spoken knowledgeably about costs, climate, distribution channels, storage and so on, explaining earnestly to me how it wouldn’t be economic to grow Limes there, then I would have said “Oh, what a shame” and understood. That isn’t the case. The equation appears to be “I don’t personally use limes in the kitchen” equals “there’s no point in exporting them by the million to countries that DO use limes in the kitchen”.
You can find many examples similar to the ‘Limes’ scenario in Greece. The blindness to opportunity of these smart, warm and generous people is the single biggest factor holding them back, even more than the ludicrous taxes.
I feel like I probably just lost a large part of my Hellenic readership. Luckily for me, there isn’t one yet, to the best of my knowledge. So in some sense I’m just dropping words into a vacuum, but maybe it will end up being read by a Greek person eventually, who knows?
Do I have a message of hope for this individual? Perhaps I do.
Your future is in your hands. Whatever the rest of the world does, in the end it will be up to you to turn your beautiful country into a prosperous and happy nation. Look at your children playing in the square and think what you want for them in their lives. Look at the UK, Germany, France, USA and other powerful economies and see what you can learn from their approach. I’m not suggesting for a moment that you make your country into a clone of them, but the people of these countries have an eye for opportunity that creates continually evolving and growing economies that have generated wealth for centuries.
Acquire that same eye. Grasp chances with both hands and all of you, working together, can raise up a new Greece for your children.
Time to make a bigger cake.
You can put a slice of lime on the top.
Filed under: Politics & Religion
