Thank Goodness The Stupid, Socialist Greeks Said "No" To A Bailout! - John Hawkins

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” – Margaret
Thatcher

Greece is liberal economics on steroids, Detroit writ large, and a place where the "takers" outnumber the "makers." In other words, if you want to know what the end road is for the sort of economics pushed by people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Paul Krugman, Greece is it.

According to the World Bank, Greece’s labor participation rate is only 53%. It’s hard for private industry to take advantage of an underemployed populace because government regulations and powerful unions make it difficult for new job-creating businesses to get off the ground.

"Among those obstacles are the role the government plays in many sectors of the economy — either through outright ownership of assets, such as a utility; price controls; and high barriers to entry, such as strict limitations on the number of players in a profession, and/or difficult licensing requirements, according to the McKinsey report. Add to all that very tough labor restrictions on large enterprises. The result is that very few businesses have been able to get started or grow in size..."

Then there are pension problems, which are even worse than the ones we have in the United States.

"The Greek Reporter notes that according to the data, almost 75 percent of Greek pensioners retire before the age of 61" and "according to the IMF, pensions account for around 17 percent of the country’s GDP."

Greece has also been running a deficit four times bigger than EU members are allowed to have by law and papering it over with phony statistics. Incidentally, Barack Obama’s favorite Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, was involved in those shady dealings all the way up to its eyeballs.
Its government is so big that even Michalis Chrysochoidis, Greece’s minister of development and competitiveness admits it’s dragging down the economy.

Perhaps the most difficult hurdle for Greece to overcome, at least politically, is the size of the public sector versus the private sector.

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