So... Greece?

[mrstickball]

lestatdark said:

As an outsider, I do not condone the riots in Greece, mainly because I believe such behaviour is only going to hurt the country in the long run, and that's what Greece needs the least these days, but I do understand that the majority of the people rioting are fearful of the great changes that their country has to go through in order to become a viable market once again, or at least have enough funding to get back on track.

But you're right, such a large public sector is unsustainable. I may be wrong, but I heard that Greece's public sector was almost 80% of their total economical weight, which is, of course, not a viable solution. Simply put, you cannot (as a government) generate enough income to sustain such a massive working force in a country, even if you pushed taxes to an insanely high value and cut on every social support and spending. Also, (I might be wrong in this point too), isn't Greece's major sector the tertiary sector, just as Portugal? If we're struggling with such a scenario and our public sector is only 35%, you can just imagine the damage an 80%, tertiary sector based economy would do to a country. 

I'll explain why I think my values aren't completely correct (anyone from Greece is welcomed to help me and explain it to me). These values are the last ones I heard from an interview with the official greek ambassador here in Portugal, back when Greece was receiving it's first share of the international aid in 2010, so they might be a bit out-of-date or not completely accurate.

Greece's public sector is about 40% of GDP currently.

One discussion I was reading on another forum (which has a few economists among other people) talked about one of Greece's main problems is that their tax structure is very, VERY poor. Many people avoid paying or get out of it entirely, especially the rich, which is causing tax revenues to be much less than what it needs to be - coupled with a very expensive public sector, you get insane amounts of debt-to-GDP.

Sad times are ahead for those who willingly voted themselves pay raises and benefits. This goes for every country that has relied on such actions to keep power.