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Comment by elorant | Hacker News Reader

In Greece after three years of austerity measures we work at least 12 hours every day and if we manage go 10 days for vacations during summer we'd be happy. I guess that is a preview of what's gonna happen at the rest of Europe and US in the years to come.

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In Lithuania after 4 years of austerity we work the same 8 hours and have 28 days for vacations. The only thing that was taken from us is holidays that matches with weekends (e.g. Mother day is on Sunday so we don't get free Monday anymore). We were in quite similar situation like you (in Greece) but our politicians did better job in the face of crisis.

Of course you are still richer than us (so maybe you should stop complaining?). BTW how do you feel about Estonia helping you? Overall looking from our side it looks like that a lot of wrong decisions have been made in Greece but you have made good choices recently. I think you will get better in the future. I doubt that something like that will happen in other EU countries.

In Ireland after several years of austerity there are still the same legal holiday entitlements. There were a few months where the minimum wage was cut, but it was restored again. Taxes have increased slightly.

I would be really interested in what you think Lithuania's politicians did right and Greece's did wrong?

It would be very useful to see the diff

At first let's list what's similar:

* Corruption level here and in Greece is quite similar in my opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index . I think in recent years we got better but still far from perfect.

* We don't have Euro but we are pegged to Euro (de facto fluctuation 0%). IMHO in this regard we are similar to Greece - while we have freedom to change rate we have not used it.

* Both countries were not prepared for crisis if we compare them to Estonia as example.

In some aspects we were in very similar situation. Now what's different in my opinion: Austerity measures in Lithuania were very strict. We had so called "Reforms night" there our newly elected parliament made a lot of unpopular decisions (e.g. salaries decreased in public sector) and actually some of them of questionable long-term value while good in short-term (e.g. they cut payments for private pension funds what saved money in short-term but I have no idea what will happen in the future). Meanwhile in Greece it was really hard to do anything like that because everything they did was met with big opposition from society. As well little details like very early pension in Greece is not helping either. We had big buffer to go in debt without facing serious problem when borrowing money. Lastly we are still quite poor country and it is barely could be worse than it is sometimes :-) Greece is quite rich country.

Austerity measures in Greece were also very strict. Greece is the only country in the developed world in the last fifty years that managed to lower the deficit by 5% in a single year. Salaries at the public sector have been reduced by 40%.

As for your last statement, we’re a rich country because we didn’t embrace communism as you guys did.

Yes, they were quite strict in Greece as well but they were met with constant labor union strikes. I guess the main reason why we did better we had less to lose.

You are right about communism being the reason why you are rich and we are not but there was no choice for us (foreign army in our territory and we erased from map as independent country) so "embrace" is wrong word.

Officially no, but your social policies (30hr work week, 1 week of paid by country vacations and others that were highlighted in the newspapers when the crisis started) place you even beyond former communist countries :)

Estonia is helping Greece now? Do you have some news source?

Is CNN good enough:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/29/business/estonia-pm-market...

The proportion of public money burnt into corruption is much lower in the rest of europe and US. Whatever happens, it might not be great, but it's not likely to be as harsh as in Greece.

Spain doesn’t have corruption as high as in Greece but they’re in deep shit already. Judging a financial crisis with stereotypes isn’t the best approach.

I don’t know if you heard lately about the Barclays scandal. Seems like we don’t have the monopoly of corruption after all. Even the almighty Brits fucked it up big time. Hoorah!

Methinks there's a big difference between private crime and public corruption.

Besides, Britain is not falling apart because of the Barclays scandal, and unlike Greece, it isn't the entire country that is in on the scam.

Yet in Germany, workers have 8 weeks vacation and work 8 hours/day.

I seriously doubt germans have 8 weeks of vacation (I think it's four and wikipedia seems to agree[0]) but maybe I am missing something, would you care to share some url about it ?

Because I am moving to germany if I get to not work for two months.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...

Rather it is 6 weeks vacations + public holidays. 8 hours a day is a bit low, in IT you'll most probably do around 9 hours, not including lunch break.

Maybe you tell other Greeks to pay taxes again.

Greeks actually pay more taxes, as a percentage of GDP, than Americans do (31% versus 27%). The main differences lie elsewhere, #1 being that the GDP that is taken out of is much lower, due to Greece having mostly a cottage-industry type economy (lots of small family businesses, few megacorps). That in turn has a lot of causes, some cultural, some historical, some due to excessively complex regulations (which have been streamlined in the past 10 years, but not fast enough).

The US is far from the path to debt free either - the difference with Greece is that they can print their own money. The US is trading low taxes against high inflation right now.

Except our inflation isn't particularly high at the moment in the US, we were undershooting our 2% target for a while then the Fed printed a bunch of money (because they can't bring the Fed Rate below the IOR Rate) and now we're on target again.

EDIT: The fact that we could print money to get out of debt if we needed to is a big part of why we don't need to, though.

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