On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 10:53:28 AM UTC-4, Joe Gwinn wrote:
In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:20:39 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 06:55:39 -0700, Rudy Canoza
wrote:

On 3/23/2015 10:33 AM, dpb wrote:
On 03/23/2015 10:25 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:22:37 -0500, wrote:
...

Them was tough folks...

I'll say they were tough. We have plenty of Depression-era stories in
my family, but combining it with the Dust Bowl must have made them
epic.

It hardened people in different ways, some became so concerned even
after the era was over they never did recover. I know of an old fellow
only slightly older than grandfather down in the OK panhandle about 40
mi on W from us who never got over the feeling of needing to miser
everything--he never bought any newer or larger equipment nor other
improvements so when there were better years he couldn't take advantage
of them owing to simply being so outdated couldn't do more than just get
by.

The idea that it was a universally searing, wrenching experience is BS -
a political myth. At its depth, 25% of the workforce was unemployed.
That's terrible, but it means 75% of the workforce was still working,
and life for them and their families went on more or less normally.

Greece has had unemployment in excess of 25% for over three years.
Their definition approximates ours: not working but seeking work. I
doubt if their depression is portrayed as ours was.

Greece's situation is not portrayed as ours was for good reason.
Greece has safety nets. In the early years of the Depression, the US
did not.

No Social Security or other safety nets. By 1932 alone, 273,000
American families were evicted from their homes. There were roughly 2
million homeless people in the US during the Depression.

And then there were the bank failures. No FDIC. By 1933, depositors
lost $140 billion through bank failures. 11,000 of the country's
25,000 banks collapsed. Lending almost stopped.

These things had cascading effects that disrupted life 'way beyond the
mere unemployment numbers.

There is a lot more to it than that, Ed. Greece is not a good parallel.

I agree. Ball's comparison is not a good one.


Greece's problems are caused by gross mismanagement, and Germany is not
willing to subsidize this.

Greece didn't belong in the Euro zone to begin with. It's a different
culture. Trying to shoehorn them into a northern European business and
financial culture was never a good idea.


Data point: something like one half of employed people in Greece work
for the government. How can this work? (I read it in the WSJ, but
don't recall where. When I asked a Greek coworker, he would not answer
the question, always changed the subject.)

This is not correct. The percentage who work for the government itself
is very low (7.9%). But add in those employed by public corporations,
and Greece (GRC in the chart) is still lower, at 20.7%, than many
other countries:

http://tinyurl.com/p6bxrb6

Countries with higher percentages include Norway, Denmark, France, and
the Netherlands.

And many others are in the same neighborhood:

Canada is 18.8%
The UK is 18.6%
The US is 14.6%
Switzerland is 14.5%

So percentages in that range can work. It's partly a matter of
culture, and largely a matter of how well they're run. It's difficult
to make a country with 20% or more competitive in global terms, but it
can produce a very nice life.

I'm not sure I buy this, no matter what the published statistics claim.
The Greeks clearly lied to gain admission to the Euro.

The big money is most likely in pensions.

If (when, probably) Germany declines to subsidize the Greek govt, it
will go bankrupt. This is actually a good thing, as it will force
housecleaning in Greece.

Nor do Greeks pay taxes.

"Many Greeks do pay taxes and by law should. The Greek government has been lax in collecting them."

-- http://www.economist.com/blogs/graph.../daily-chart-0

The Italians are the same in this,

"Time to prepare and pay taxes (hours) in Italy was last measured at 269 in 2013, according to the World Bank."

-- http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ital...s-wb-data.html