Greece in Peril

Things are not good in Greece. For a decade or more, people in a basically poor country got used to living like other Europeans, living a middle class lifestyle. How could they do this? On credit, of course. Their government borrowed money.

Now the credit is cut off, and Greek people are asking "What happened?" See this article by Hara Kouki in The Guardian (U.K.) for a sense of their helplessness and frustration.

Greeks are told it is their fault, which is more-or-less true, and they refuse to believe it. All they did was live like the Germans or French live, in a country which is more corrupt and generates substantially less wealth than do Germany or France.

I wonder if we are headed for a similar experience in the U.S.? Our country generates a lot of wealth, and we are not vastly corrupt. On the other hand, we've wanted substantially more government services than we are willing to pay for with our taxes. Like Greece, we've lived on credit, aka the deficit.