Greece’s problems with paying the bills

The Greek government’s budgetary woes are well known by this point, but a newly-released Flash Eurobarometer survey from last year reveals a different side of the financial crisis: Greece’s latest deficit-cutting measures may help the country escape its debt crisis, but higher taxes and wage cuts will be a hardship for many Greek citizens, who ...

The Greek government's budgetary woes are well known by this point, but a newly-released Flash Eurobarometer survey from last year reveals a different side of the financial crisis:

The Greek government’s budgetary woes are well known by this point, but a newly-released Flash Eurobarometer survey from last year reveals a different side of the financial crisis:

Greece’s latest deficit-cutting measures may help the country escape its debt crisis, but higher taxes and wage cuts will be a hardship for many Greek citizens, who already are the most likely in Europe to report problems paying their bills.

Fully fifty-seven percent of Greeks answered that they are “Constantly struggling and have fallen behind with some/many bills.” This number is twelve percent higher than the three runners-up, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Cyprus. Furthermore, forty-three percent of Greeks claimed that though they had no problems paying bills in 2008, they had begun having problems in 2009 and expected them to continue in 2010 — a number also twelve percent higher than the E.U. average of 31 percent.

It looks like this big, fat Greek economic collapse will last well into the future.

Andrew Swift is an editorial researcher at Foreign Policy.

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