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Greece And Other Benefit Scroungers

Wren-Lewis, S. (2015) “Greece And Other Benefit Scroungers“, Social Europe Journal, 30 March.

 

Whenever I write a post critical of German views on Eurozone policy, I get comments which can be paraphrased in the following way. Greece (and maybe other Eurozone countries) are incapable of governing themselves properly, and when they get into difficulties Germany has to bail them out, so it is only reasonable that as a price for this Germany should insist on imposing changes to the way these countries do things.

To say such an attitude is inherently wrong (wrong in any possible circumstances) seems to be too strong. The IMF, after all, has played a very similar role many times. Many may criticise the kinds of reforms that the IMF has demanded as part of its conditionality, but to suggest that conditions are never made as part of such a loan package seems unrealistic.

But while conditionality of any kind cannot be ruled out, it can also go far too far. It should never become imperialism, and the choices of a sovereign people should be respected and accommodated, not ignored.

It is clear that the Greek government ran up unsustainable debts, and tried to hide these. As a result, it was bound to default on those debts. As doing so would exclude it from the markets for a time, it was also reasonable to lend (not give) Greece money to enable it to gradually rather than immediately achieve primary balance. Some conditionality to correct any underlying weaknesses in the openness and accountability of the budgetary process would seem reasonable in such circumstances.

 

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