Greece: How did it get into this mess?

What is happening in Greece is the result of socialism playing out in the city square. But you won’t know that by reading papers or watching TV.
Greece has enacted entitlements which assure the citizens a royal life just because they are born in Greece. For example everybody gets pension. Everybody, means everybody. At the age of 57, you as a private or self employed person retire with full State pension. But there is another catch. If you work in a hazardous profession, you can retire with full pension at the age of 50. There are about 450 professions classified as hazardous. One of them is hairdresser.
Yep, you read that right, in Greece, hairdresser is a hazardous profession.
So if you are a hairdresser, you can retire with full state pension at the age of 50.
All other entitlements- healthcare, education, unemployment benefits, housing, etc., of course are there. With these securities in place, Greeks did what all other Europeans have done: They stopped having babies. If government is there to take care of you from cradle to grave, why go to the trouble of maintaining families and having babies? Its fertility rate is just 1.41. (World Bank in fact put the figure at 1.29 in 2013.)


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