A few weeks ago I went to Athens, the capital of Greece. I was interested in the fact that almost everything looked normal considering the government is in a huge debt. It was the complete opposite of what I thought Athens would be like.
Some Greek people we met said that Greeks would prefer to help their own children than to pay their taxes to the government so as to help the country as a whole. Maybe a reason for this could be that Greeks don’t trust the government to use the tax well that they pay to the state. It is a fact though, that if each person just looks out for their family, rather than contributing to the government, nothing good will be done for the country and the crisis will steadily get worse. For example, two parents wouldn’t give their money to their children for them to spend it on building a new hospital, which is something the government could do.
However Greece gets out of the crisis, it will be a struggle since the country needs to pay back 382 billion € to several different countries that they have borrowed from. As well as being in debt, which means having to pay huge interests on its loans, Greece at the same time has to pay for its own country’s needs, like healthcare and military upgrades. The expatriate people we stayed with said that many Greek people went around their business as usual but that they are being very careful about how much they spend, for example “making a coffee last a whole afternoon”. This shows that there is after all a difference to before and that Greeks recognize that they and the country are now a fair deal poorer and have to save their money more.