There is much truth to a lot of things you mentioned. Clearly there is some "liability" to citizens voting for those Governments and some of them clearly wanted to ensure that their benefits would continue for ever... However, you must acknowledge that there were not that many options for them available. The two main Parties had ruled Greece from 1974 and on wards...They were pretty much the same...Until recently there were only two other small Parties in the Greek Parliament. Both of them were left...One of them (KKE- Greek Communist Party) was advocating that we should desert Capitalism and adopt the Economic model of the Soviet Union... they said that if heir Party would rule Greece they would desert the EU and NATO!!!NO COMMENT!!!
Also they(politicians) have been lying to citizens about the strength of the Economy. Nobody explained to them the seriousness of the situation...As I was aware of it, I found myself becoming the centre of scrutiny for being over concerned...As mentioned earlier in my posts in 2009 there were elections in Greece. The leader of the opposition Party George Papandreou (and now Prime Minister) was desperate to get elected. He lost two elections and the third one would mean that he could no longer be the leader of the Party.... He was promising things that he could not clearly deliver... He also stated that THERE IS PLENTY OF MONEY!!! I think this example gives you an idea how many citizens (clearly not me..) were being deceived to vote for him...
As for the tax evasion....As a son of an employee of the public sector I can confidently say that employees could not tax evade. Since their salaries were known they could not tax evade. Only the self employed and the businessmen could do that...Clearly not the vast majority of the Greek population...
But why would they do it??? I can give you some reasons... In Greece as mentioned in my earlier posts there is not a stable tax regime...That means that any moment, even 1 month after the tax regime has changed, the tax level could change again...Please note that the VAT in Greece changed twice(!!!) in 2010 from 19% to 23%... In 2005 as an act of good will and in order to attract investors, the Greek Government decided to lower the Corporate Tax from 35% to 25%... It stayed there for quite some time...Now that there is need for money they raised it to 40%...I feel sorry for those investors taking decision to invest in Greece based on that act of "good" will. I can tell you that this year all the citizens (including my father) paid additional taxes on the income they had last year!!! They paid that tax when it was due but because the Government was in need of money the sent notices to pay some additional money..Now they want to impose a tax for the income the citizens will have in the next year!!! They have not got their salaries yet but they are ordered to pay on future income!!!
Another example...Remember the Brokerage firm I was working for??? That Head broker (and owner of that firm) had to pay for rents maintenance costs, software fees, salaries to the employees etc... After all those costs he could have his income. Do you know how much we would keep?? 50% only from the very first Euro!!! So that meant on an net income of 60, 000 Euros (that is how much he was earning in 1999, not bad at all for Greece) he had to pay 30,000 Euros income tax!!! That is because his services were segmented to that tax level.... The same applies if you are self-employed and provide educational services...So if you provide lets say FOREX education to persons half of your income will be deducted by taxes...This means if you earned 20,000 Euros that year you have to pay 10,000 Euros tax. And you have to live with the rest of the money.... How does that sound to you??? Most of the self employed if they were reporting their actual income they could not make a decent living...However, this doesn't apply to the big businessmen...
One last example.During the summer of 2007 there were numerous fires in Greek Forests. Sooner or later because of their severity the Greek Authorities could not manage them...Those fires went to rural areas as well...Around 30 persons died!!! Many citizens have lost their houses as they were burnt...I was shocked by this reality. 50+ years old persons had lost their houses and had nowhere to live... Then the Greek Government unable to compensate all of them had opened an account to a bank and appealed to the public to help those affected citizens...I had saved 200 Euros and wanted to buy a new pair of shoes.But I didn't give it a second thought. The next day I went and deposited that money to that account..The rest of the citizens as well. The Greeks get united when there is a need...Do you know what happened to that money??? Only 5% was donated to those victims?? the rest of the money was used for other purposes..There were allegations made that this money was used in order to repair and rebuild one the City Halls that was burnt from the fires....
That moment I swore that I would never pay any other tax to those robbers!!! They are (and will remain) robbers and the money paid to them will not be used for any good purpose...If I knew that the taxes paid by me would be used for good purposes I would be very happy about it...And this is the mentality of many Greeks and I don't blame them for this (one of the very few) matter...I have to state that I currently live in the U.K. and I have never tax evaded. I pay my taxes and will continue to pay them...However , I know that the tax regime is stable (so no nasty surprises) and that nobody is partying with my taxes (and if somebody is partying with it he or she would soon have to pay for it...).
I hope that this post has given you valuable information...
Evangelos
