Domain of incompetence December 1, 2010

December 1, 2010

Public Sector: "Domain of incompetence"

Kathimerini editorial by Nikos Konstandaras on the disentegrating private sector economy and the huge public sector that will not conform to the reality on the streets, furthering the spiral downward for the whole country

"The crisis is affecting all of us. If we haven’t yet lost our jobs or seen our incomes slashed, we all know colleagues, friends and relatives who are forced to bid farewell to all they knew, crossing the threshold of uncertainty. There are already 650,000 registered unemployed, more than 12 percent of the labor force. They have to find work within a year, while they still have benefits and their social security fees are being paid. According to the budget, though, next year the unemployment rate is expected to reach 14.5 percent.

The Labor Institute (the research wing of the country’s biggest union grouping, GSEE), puts the figure at 20 percent. This does not include those who are working part-time, on reduced wages. It does not count those in the black economy who lose their work nor the long-term unemployed nor those who cannot even enter the labor market. Many businesses have closed, others are struggling, credit expansion is nearly zero. Tax revenues are down, forcing the state to make even further spending cuts. Everything is frozen.

Into this wasteland go those who lose their jobs. They are all from the private sector, because the government and political parties are standing like watchdogs at the gates of the public sector, vowing that they will allow no one to hurt it. If they do not change their attitude, the country has no hope. It is a cliche that our public sector is much, much bigger than the country’s needs. The endless discussion about its size, though, eclipses the real problem: It is useless. If it were small and useless, that would be a problem. If it were large and useful, it would be another. The fact that it is huge and useless makes it a tragedy – the biggest cause of our current problems, the biggest obstacle to getting out of the crisis."

Related:

Jobs in Greece