While our own nation wrestles
with record deficit spending, soaring national debt, and credit rating downgrades
with threats of more, we should take particular interest in the current circumstances
of the nation of Greece. Not because the
Greek financial crisis directly impacts our own nation’s financial future, but
because many of the same mistakes made over the past 100 years in Greece could
easily be duplicated here. Allowing our
government’s determined trend toward nationalization of some industries and
institutions, especially healthcare, instead of reforms within the current
configuration, will shift our economic future onto the path, or rut, upon which
Greece has found itself entrenched.
Following World War I, Greece transitioned
to the nationalization of many institutions including schools and
hospitals. Where local trustees had once
successfully administered these vital social institutions with passion,
representing community interest and supported by local funding, state-appointed
bureaucrats replaced them, being awarded posts on the basis of politics rather
than proven merit. As national control expanded, local and
community interests became less influential than national political agendas. The local leaders, state appointed, then
worked to strengthen their own party machine by distributing what our own
political system calls ‘earmarks’, that would encourage local support for the
national party most generous, regardless of inefficiencies and wasteful
spending.
One economic expert, Richard
Parker, a lecturer from the Harvard Kennedy School, attempts to debunk some of
the popular explanations for the current crisis in Greece, noting, for
instance, that the percentage of Greek workers employed by the state is no
higher than most other European countries at 1 of every 5. And yet, what Parker fails to mention is that
public payroll expenses (salaries and pensions of state workers) have ballooned
from 38% to 55% of state revenues over the period from 2000 to 2009. It should
be no surprise, then, that local appointed officials are the most hostile to
reform and austerity measures aimed at reducing the burden these benefits have
become, the very privileges that have contributed to this broken system.
In a recent letter from
Thessaloniki, Antonis Kamaras, advisor to the mayor of Thessaloniki, encourages
Greeks to solve the current financial crisis by looking to the example of their
grandparents, who relied upon local, community based administration and funding
of many of these services and institutions that have been nationalized.
What I found fascinating was to
recognize that a letter was written to Thessaloniki, from the Apostle Paul,
recorded as Second Thessalonians in our New Testament. And just as today many in Greece are relying
upon the government to ensure their own income and future, in Paul’s day there
were some there who were relying upon others for their own welfare. Paul addressed this issue as follows:
For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, because we
did not act in an undisciplined manner among you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread
without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and
day so that we might not be a burden to any of you … For even when we were with
you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him
eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:7-10).
In our own country, we have a
growing percentage of our population who is dependent, to some measure, upon
government assistance. What is more
troubling is the desire of one of our political parties’ to nationalize certain
segments of the economy, a move which will only deepen the tax burden required to support
the growth in government assistance those changes will bring. As Kamaras has advised his country to look to
the example of their grandparents, I would encourage them, and us, to look
further back to the exhortation that Scripture gave to their distant relatives.
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