Posted on 05/28/2023 12:39:01 PM PDT by Brilliant
That silence you heard last weekend was Europe not staging a freakout over an election in Greece. What a change from only eight years ago, when voting in the Aegean country triggered panic in Berlin, Paris and Brussels. The difference—although conventional wisdom is loath to admit it—is supply-side economic policies.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis slightly increased the vote share of his center-right New Democracy party compared to 2019 with nearly 41%. The far-left party Syriza, led by former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, saw its vote share fall by about 11 points, to 20%…
Greece was at the epicenter of the eurozone sovereign-debt crisis that started in 2010. Two bailouts followed, in 2010 and 2012, funded by European governments, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. These came with punishing conditions, including steep tax increases, spending cuts Athens barely implemented and economic deregulation Athens mostly ignored. The result was an economic contraction of roughly 25%.
The fiasco culminated in 2015 with Mr. Tsipras’s election. He promised voters a better deal with less onerous terms. Instead he triggered a new crisis that required a third bailout. All the while, prominent economists in the U.S. and Europe said Greece should leave the euro, using a restored drachma to devalue the country back to prosperity while keeping the government-spending gushers open. But Greeks like the euro precisely because it had halted Athens’s many devaluations in the past.
Mr. Mitsotakis changed tack after his election in 2019 with reforms to spur private investment. He cut the top corporate tax rate to 22% from 29%. Although the top rate of 44% on personal incomes is high even by European standards, taxes on capital gains (15%) and dividends (5%) are low to encourage investment…
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
A few years ago they were saying that Greece was the basket case of Europe. But no more!
Somehow they were able to milk the welfare states for a free ride, the clever devils!
Greek authorities are investigating implausibly high disability claims for blindness on the island of Zakynthos—including a taxi driver and a bird hunter.
The Greek health ministry is investigating on Zakynthos after local officials flagged records showing what they said is an implausibly high number of disability claims for blindness.
About 1.8% of the island’s population of 39,000 claimed the benefit last year, according to the health ministry. That is around nine times the prevalence of blindness estimated for many European countries
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203370604577263863362854348
Have you seen its budgets?!
It’s STILL a basket case.
“The figures, approved by Eurostat, said that the general government’s debt dropped by 23 percentage points to 171.3% of GDP in 2022 from 194.6% of GDP in 2021.”
Happy days are here again!
From last year on US aid, some of which went to Greece...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-invasion-day-197-1.6575675
Don’t know how much of our money Deep State has given Greece so far this year...
—> Have you seen its budgets?! It’s STILL a basket case.
Greece or the USA?
Of course, why did Greece and Hungary just veto the EU’s eleventh ( 11 th) sanctions package?
The collective West is on their 11th sanctions package…..guess they aren’t working as thought.
Dissenters in the EU are growing, especially as Germany announced they are officially in recession.
“Have you seen its budgets?!
It’s STILL a basket case.”
I know, it’s almost as bad as ours!
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