In the fervor of their born again fundamental free market economics, the so called troika now dictating policy to Greece decided it was not enough for Greece to reduce its deficit by slashing welfare and pay in the public sector and pensions. That was good, of course, but not nearly enough. No. What is now needed is for Greece to become Competitive!!!
Well, yes, you might say. It is important to make Greece more competitive. We need investment in new plant, an overhaul of the whole system of granting licences and… No! No! No! You’ve got it all wrong!!! When we say Competitive, the ONLY thing we mean is the reduction of labor costs! That’s all.
So, these nice gentlemen went about abolishing just about all labor laws in order to bring about a flexible labor force, one that can be hired and fired at will with no compensation. In short, workers no longer have any rights left. But that was not enough. Wages and salaries had to be slashed in the private sector too. A slash of 22% at a stroke, and of 32% if you happen to be under 25. Screw the young!
Now that will make Greece more competitive, we are told, and reduced unemployment (which has only soared to 21% through their policies, but still.)
Anyway, if they really wanted to go about making Greece (and the rest of Europe eventually too) more competitive, they have been very timid. They didn’t go nearly far enough in abolishing all workers rights. They really should have gone the whole way and abolished child protection. Children should be sent to work in sweat shops from an early age. First of all you can give them a daily wage of one Euro or less, and then think of all you will save from abolishing the state school system? Surely it should be self evident that Greek children no longer need to go to school at all if they are going to live in a competitive country?
And then wages and salaries. These should be abolished altogether. Workers can’t expect to actually get paid can they? How would businesses profit if they had to pay for labor? What we really need is a system of labor like the one they used to have in the southern US confederate states before the civil war.
Oh, and as to health care, all that nonsense should be abolished too. If a worker starts getting ill, there’s no point in squandering scarce resources trying to make him better. He’s not going to be very productive now he’s started losing his health anyway. So just shoot him through the head to put him out of his misery, otherwise the country’s economy won’t be competitive.
The Troika knows all this is self evident. And they’ve already told us so. No matter who or what you might decide to vote in your elections, policy will be dictated by us! Or else? What? Or else, you’ll only make it worse for yourselves if you don’t servilely prostrate yourselves to our iron will as you have been doing up to know under your nice politicians and technocrats.
Well, they are right. Things would only get worse. Sort of like this.
All the same, I can see us all start stamping our bare little feet on the ground in defiance, shouting Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah! So there!
P.S. I would like to thank the Guardian for reminding us of this excellent scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.