Tougher Than Birds and the Bees Questions

After reading a Times Online story regarding Greece’s economic woes, and the current troubles resulting from those woes, titled Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe, which provides questions and observations such as these,

“I cannot help but blame my parents a little for what’s happened,” said Achilles Zacharoulis, a 36-year-old cardiologist. “They were here all that time,” he added, referring to the past three decades of mismanagement and fiscal insanity. “But what did they do to stop it?”

Vaggelis Gettos, 24, is just as alarmed at the burden being heaped on the young by austerity measures expected to be announced today, and has pledged to resist them in more protests this week against what he sees as a plot to impoverish Greece.

“We will live much worse than our parents,” he said. “Why should we be made to pay for their mistakes?”

William A. Jacobsen, of the Cornell Law School, responds in light of our own current economic woes, in a blog post titled Questions I Never Want My Children To Ask.  Portions of Jacobsen’s response.

I wonder whether the questions being asked by the youth of Greece are the same questions our children and grandchildren will ask as we head further down the road of unprecedented national debt on a scale unimaginable two years ago as a result of Obama’s attempt to restructure society…

The Tea Parties and voter discontent at the size of government are not driven by racism or fanaticism, as the mainstream media, left-wing bloggers and academics, and Democratic politicians contend.

Rather, those of us who oppose destructive Obama administration policies do so because we do not want our children and grandchildren to pay for our mistakes.

And we never want our children and grandchildren to ask: “But what did they do to stop it.”

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/02 at 08:23 AM

  1. It’s too bad if 36-year-old cardiologist, Achilles Zacharoulis, is typical of the professional - or any - classes of contemporary Greek society.  That a highly educated person in his mid-thirties would proclaim that he “cannot help but blame my parents a little for what’s happened” just doesn’t bode well for economic recovery.  He’s been an adult for half his life, but he doesn’t speak as though he has much sense of his own responsibilities and options, or much understanding that his own actions now are far more important than anything his parents may have done or not done in the past.

    The Times write-up was pretty interesting all around, including his bit, which would probably resonate with most Tea Partiers:

    There was hope, he [president of the Athens chamber of commerce] believed, if the government lifted numerous restrictions on business. It costs more to transport a sack of potatoes from northern Greece to Athens than from Athens to Dusseldorf, because haulage, like many other sectors of the Greek economy, is an impenetrable cartel.

    When Michalos started a commodities trading business in London in the 1980s, the paperwork took him 48 hours, he said. In Greece’s “Soviet-style” economy he had to go through 117 bureaucratic procedures to get the right government permits. A wealthy friend of his had taken 10 years to win permission to put up a hotel.

    “It would have taken him another 10 years or a large payment under the table if he wasn’t a friend of very important politicians,” said Michalos. Stournaras, an Oxford-educated economist, who believes that lifting these restrictions and trimming fat from the public sector will have an extraordinary effect on the Greek economy.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  05/02  at  10:14 AM

  2. That a highly educated person in his mid-thirties would proclaim that he “cannot help but blame my parents a little for what’s happened” just doesn’t bode well for economic recovery.  He’s been an adult for half his life, but he doesn’t speak as though he has much sense of his own responsibilities and options, or much understanding that his own actions now are far more important than anything his parents may have done or not done in the past. (bold substituted for italics in comment - ed.)

    Linda, disturbingly, I hear intimations of this 36 year old’s response, even now, here in our country.

    Posted by John Venlet  on  05/02  at  10:25 AM

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