“We are only allowed to choose between different forms of death,” declared one 50-year-old protester to a journalist.
Eighteen months of austerity have produced a social decline that is unprecedented in peacetime. Wages and salaries in the private sector have decreased by 20 percent and in the public sector by up to 50 percent. Over one million Greeks, one in five adults and one in two young people, are unemployed. Only a third of these receive unemployment benefits, which are now due to be reduced from €460 ($600) to €360 ($470) per month.
The new austerity package passed Sunday evening will reduce the working class and broad layers of the middle class to a naked struggle for survival. By 2015, an additional 150,000 state employees are to be laid off and an additional €11.4 billion slashed from the budget, with even more cuts in public-sector wages. With prices for basic commodities at Western European levels, survival will be impossible for many, especially if they have to support destitute family members.
One does not have to be a mathematical genius to see that these measures will not solve, but only worsen the debt crisis. All economic indicators are pointing downwards. The economy shrank by 7 percent last year, industrial output by 16 percent. Despite an increase in the VAT rate, revenues from the tax declined by 19 percent because 60,000 small and family businesses went bankrupt. A further 50,000 bankruptcies are expected this year.
The government budget is now in the black, if one discounts spending on interest and debt repayment. But the level of debt servicing is so high that the total debt has risen over the past year from 140 to 160 percent of gross domestic product.
It is obvious that the shock treatment prescribed for Greece by the troika and implemented by the Greek government is not aimed at “rescuing” the country or rebalancing its budget. Rather, its purpose is to set an example and intimidate the working class in other European countries, making clear once and for all where the real power lies.
The class character of the cuts could not be more evident. While the unemployed and both public-sector and private-sector workers are bled dry, the country’s wealthy elite escapes unscathed. They have long since transferred their assets to financial and property markets abroad.
The Greek austerity measures are the spearhead of an international offensive by the financial aristocracy aimed at offloading onto the working class the full impact of the 2008 financial crisis, precipitated by the very same financial elite. The incomes, past social gains and democratic rights of workers are everywhere under attack. The German government, which has adopted a particularly arrogant stance towards Greece, proceeds with the same arrogance against unemployed workers in Germany and will act toward them in an even more ruthless manner if it succeeds in Greece.
via www.wsws.org
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