Not paying off U.S. student loans

[trubadour]

Not only that! The very mention of ethics and macro-economics, as if economics should be the handmaid of morality (not the other way around), is what really has the highhorses 'assbackwards' (to quote a poster, above).

They can't seem to imagine that equality goes both ways. They can't think beyond the prevailing status-quo. For them, it's not possible that there are rules beyond contractual obligation. It doesn't matter how stupid or wrong the system: if you once agreed to it you must go through with it.

They see ethics as secondary to economics. "Feed the machine or the machine will,.. will...DIE!" They shout, and blink; as if continuing the status-quo were the most blindingly obvious of priorities. Never mind if the machine is crashing all around us, destroying lives, destroying democracy. Never mind if your master is lashing you to death - he once fed you!

And to say the Greeks are immoral is the prime example of this lunacy.

The Greeks are immoral! Damn Europeans are immoral! Just imagine protesting at having your country sold off to furnish the coffers of multinational banks - benefiting hardly anyone while enslaving a nation! That must be absolute the pinnacle of immorality!

And to imagine a slave might, once he's got an education, might realise his bondage and cast them aside? Immorality!

[GuyInTaiwan]

trubadour: Nonsense. While the Germans were working hard, the Greeks were being lazy cunts. Serves them right that their country is going to the dogs.

[headhonchoII]

Yes all Germans work hard and all Greeks are lazy. All Jews are greedy bankers.

[sandman]

Yes all Germans work hard and all Greeks are lazy. All Jews are greedy bankers.

And get yer hands out of my sporran!

[GuyInTaiwan]

HH: Come on, what was the retirement age in Greece before? It was something absurd like 52. The black economy was/is also something absurd like 25%.

[headhonchoII]

I don't care , I don't like racism.

[GuyInTaiwan]

If you're talking about national economies, then by definition, you're painting with a broad brush.

[headhonchoII]

But you didn't, you have repeated it multiple times the Greeks deserve what they got. All of them. Okay, lucky you weren't born into the wrong country at the wrong time. Do I need to explain more?

[GuyInTaiwan]

HH: Are you arguing that people just get what they're given in life? You don't think that the general European attitude, and the Greek attitude specifically, to work has had anything to do with this situation? Is the fate of any one nation merely random, the result of luck? This is absurd, surely.

There are undoubtably people who are still doing okay in Greece, and there may even be some whose fortunes have advanced in recent months. Those people would be those who recognised the flaws in their own society and took measures to hedge against the collective folly going on around them. This is hardly a new phenomenon in history.

[Confuzius]

There are undoubtably people who are still doing okay in Greece, and there may even be some whose fortunes have advanced in recent months. Those people would be those who recognised the flaws in their own society and took measures to hedge against the collective folly going on around them. This is hardly a new phenomenon in history.

So wait a second, there is some specific way EVERYTHING was done in Greece, by EVERYONE that f***ed everything up? (of course, minus these few people who recognized the flaws of this way to do things).

This blanket idea is so easily to deconstruct that its not worth doing.

Things are more complicated than this. if you think you can explain an economic meltdown in a sentence or even a paragraph, you are clearly missing the real picture.