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Comment by dmichulke | Hacker News Reader

Germans Forget Postwar ...

Most people these days are unable to distinguish between people and their government.

They assume that governments act on behalf of the people, yet, somehow they always claim they don't feel represented by their government.

A sad world.

EDIT: "changed government and its people" to "people and their government", added title

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In that case, we should discuss helping the people, and not discuss helping the Greek government. In fact, Europe is already helping hundreds of thousands of Greeks by offering them good jobs in other countries.

6 in 10 Greeks don't pay taxes. Tax evasion is common.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/31/greece.taxes/

http://boingboing.net/2010/05/04/satellite-photos-cat.html

Have they fixed the early retirement issue?

http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-germany-pensions-2010-...

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/12/04/75-of-greek-pensi...

yes, the average greek retires at 62 and the average european retires at 60. http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/ageingandemploymentpolicies-stat...

What lazy bast… Ach, scheiße.

The age issue isn't the only problem.

"Proportion of wages as pension; Greece: 80% Germany: 46%"

Almost everything you read has Greeks living in a welfare state that they couldn't afford. You just can't kick the can down the road forever: http://www.npr.org/2015/07/07/420913926/despite-large-cuts-t...

very true, in fact any greek person worth a dime on job market can easily pack & go. i am very surprised that very few actually leave their homeland, despite constant complaints how hellish place greece became thanks to budget cuts and reforms. either that's a blatant lie, or they are just lazy.

yeah, it's not the best solution overall if all worthy people leave the place, but that's how current world works. and loss for one country is a net gain for another too (maybe germany? :))

from what I have read and seen lots of young Greeks are leaving the country. German language education has soared during the beginning of the crisis- not sure if the anti-german press coverage of the Greek press has changed that...

> Europe is already helping hundreds of thousands of Greeks by offering them good jobs in other countries

Yeah, brilliant idea, let's move 10 million people out of the Greece, because moving investments into the Greece is so difficult these days..

The Nazis did not act on behalf of the German people in the sense that the German people mostly did not want to exterminate the Jewish race along with several other demographic categories. However, limiting the scope to antisemitism itself, the Nazis were definitely representative of the German people of the time, and indeed most of Europe.

And why try to distinguish in every discussion? A government acting on behalf of the people doesn't necessarily act for the people. You can't act for all the people. The people aren't a homogeneous group either. And the government is split into several branches (sub-systems) too.

This isn't a sad world. It's just not very romantic.

If a government does something, then that doesn't mean that the people do something. "Germans", "Jews" and "Muslims" are always a generalization (as opposed to "Most/Some/A Few Germans/Jews/Muslims")

However, in this case the actor is clearly the government and it is a much more specific "subgroup" than "Germans". (Otherwise, we could as well write "Humans", "Mammals" or "Living beings" forget postwar ...).

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