U.S.

Austerity Riots – A Glimpse Of America’s Future?

The American Dream

Are the austerity protests and riots happening in Greece right now a glimpse of America’s future?  The truth is that both nations are absolutely drowning in debt.  It is just that the “day of reckoning” has already arrived for Greece but it has not arrived for the United States yet.  Yes, there are some important differences between the situation in Greece and the situation in the U.S., but there are also some important similarities.  Budget cuts and other austerity measures are being promoted by the political leaders of both countries. Greek citizens have reacted very negatively to the economic austerity programs that have been implemented in that nation.  As budget cuts on the federal, state and local levels in the United States start to really become painful, will we eventually see the same kind of austerity riots in this country that we are currently seeing in Greece?

There is a price to pay for living way, way beyond your means for decades.  The citizens of Greece are now feeling that economic pain.  In the United States, the pain of austerity is not being felt that severely yet.

So exactly what are austerity measures?  Well, in Greece they include tax increases, budget cuts and “privatization measures”.  The Greek government is swamped under an unpayable debt load and without international assistance the Greek government will default.

But all of that “international assistance” comes with strings.  The EU and the IMF are insisting on the implementation of very strict austerity measures, and the Greek people are not thrilled about this.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is telling the Greek people that it is their patriotic duty to accept these austerity measures, but most of the Greek population is not buying it.

The truth is that these international “bailouts” are just more new loans.  What the EU and the IMF are proposing is that Greece should go into even more debt and hand over even more sovereignty.

But Greece will not be able to pay back these new loans either.  In fact, these new loans will just enslave them to debt even further.  Sadly, Greece appears destined to default sooner or later regardless.

Meanwhile, big banks and big corporations are quite eager to purchase all of the juicy assets and pieces of land that the Greek government is being ordered to “privatize”.

Are you starting to understand why Greek citizens are so upset?

A lot of Greek citizens are quite apprehensive about the new austerity measures that are being proposed because the previous austerity measures have pushed many of them to the breaking point.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent Daily Mail article about the situation in Greece….

‘They cut our pay by 25 percent and a lot of people in my department have not been paid for two months,’ said 52 year-old civil servant Yannis Zaharopoulos.

‘We have got to the point where families cannot make it. We are financially and psychologically wrecked.’

What would you do if your pay had already been cut by 25 percent, you had not been paid for two months and now the government was trying to push even more austerity measures down your throat?

The sad reality of the matter is that, as an article in The Guardian recently explained, austerity has taken a vicious toll on the Greek economy….

A year of wage and pension cuts, benefit losses and tax increases has taken its toll: almost a quarter of the population now live below the poverty line, unemployment is at a record 16% and, as the economy contracts for a third year, economists estimate that about 100,000 businesses have closed.

Today, there are strikes and austerity riots all over the nation of Greece.  The nation is literally falling to pieces.  Tens of thousands of protesters are violently clashing with police.