A Eurozone Nation Reports Record Poverty Levels

Middle class Greeks are living in squalour and scavenging for food because of Euro zone austerity measures thanks to EU imposed austerity measures

I suppose I could say 'I told you so', although it would not be strictly true in the context of this blog because it didn't exist when the European Single Currency System (Euro) was launched. But I was telling anyone who was paying attention, via my newspaper column in a local publication that the Euro could not possibly work.

To be more specific, it is not only the economic structure but the culture of the north European nations that makes them economically incompatlible with the Mediterranean lands. The south is still largely agrarian and food production is based on small, independent farms. In some respects this is a better way of producing food, it is more labour intensive, thus providing work for people, and more environmentally friendly.

As far as the collectivist left are concerned however, it is hopelessly inefficient, unscientific and reactionary. The left would rather put everybody out of work and trash all the fertile land in the name of science.

Unfotunately, in their relentless pursuit of a Federal Europe, the architects of the Euro wrote the rules to make sure 'the agenda was advanced by forcing the prosperous northern nations to subsidise the financial incontinence of the south. And now the inevitable conclusion has been reached.

For the last few years and especially the last few months, all eyes in the Euro zone watchers club have been focused on Greece. From record poverty rates to record suicide rates, reports of female doctors moonlighting as prostitutes to feed their families and levels of youth unemployment topping fifty per cent, post-election hopes for a phoenix-like rebirth of a nation from the flames of Brussels imposed economic repression were seemingly dashed on Friday when leaders of the Syriza government had to ask for an extension on their debt repayments.

Greece is not the only Euro zone nation suffering however. Another nation, that begins with the letter 'G' and that is at the heart of the EU-Greece talks is also reporting record poverty levels. Newsweek reports poverty in Germany is at its highest since the reunification of the country in 1990, with 12.5 million residents now classified as 'poor'.

Taxes, falling incomes and rising cost of essentials are to blame as the Germans try to bear the burden of supporting the basket case nations alone, France, The Netherlands and all the other prosperous Euro zone nations having been sucked into the financial black hole.

All things are relative of course and we suspect poor Germans are considerably better off than poor Greeks, but a twenty five per cent drop in family income is no easier to bear because we all tend to live according to our means and when filet steak is replaced by SPAM it is no easier to bear than when bean soup is replaced by dry bread.


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