Five years ago Greece suffered a national bankruptcy and was all over the news. Perhaps it is time to look back in to see how they've fared. Barry Strauss
writes for
The Hill that things have stabilized but are little better.
Greece has suffered a sharp drop in wages, declines in both production and consumption, an increase in poverty, a general unemployment rate of 27 percent — with nearly 60 percent youth unemployment — a return to the countryside by people who had to give up the Greek dream of making it in Athens, and emigration by the young to northern Europe, the Americas and Australia. What few new jobs Greece has are often low-paying and the applicants are often hugely overqualified. In short, Greece remains in a depression.
Strauss concludes:
If things are improving, they are only improving slowly, and at a high human cost. Like the eurozone itself, Greece seems stuck.
The Greeks are no longer rioting; they seem resigned to the new normal.
