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Greece introduces the six-day work week
(www.dw.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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I was really confused because last I heard, Greece had a preposterously high unemployment rate. Assuming this data I randomly pulled off of Google is correct, unemployment has been dropping like a rock from its peak: https://tradingeconomics.com/greece/unemployment-rate
However! It's still above 10%, which in the United States at least would be considered devastatingly high. Sounds like yet another case of "nobody wants to work!"
Holy crap it was 28% about a decade ago.
I'd be willing to bet this genius maneuver drives it back up.
Yeah, looking more closely at that graph, I'm noticing it starts in 2009, when Greece had The Crisis: sovereign debt soared thanks to the housing bubble collapse, and people taking a closer look at the actual books of the Greek state. Austerity measures are what led to the massive unemployment spike, and this 6-day work week is another version of austerity.
Austerity doesn't work. This graph couldn't be clearer about that fact.
It's more probable that in reality there are a of people working without the state knowing about it. Much tourism related work is traditionally paid "under the table" in cash, by the day or by the week.
This kind of stuff is trivial for the IRS to find if they wanted to. Just crosscheck revenue, purchases and wage costs and such. And when stuff is off balance, audit. Here in the Netherlands they even look at how much mayonaise and water a restaurant uses to estimate revenue. Same as number of cans of hair product for hairdressers.
And if a company is found at fault they force them to switch to predominantly taking card payments instead of cash to make it even more transparent for the IRS.
Apparently they also estimate people's net worth by looking at registered cars, real estate and the length of you yaght.. and this is pretty accurate to determine if an audit is in order.
All conservatives hear is:
That's all it takes for them to think, "wow, they're doing a great job!" Even when austerity measures mean they can't feed their families. It seems like it's true no matter where you go in the world.
Conservatives think that is doing a great job. Their economic Platonic ideal is serfdom.