How has life changed?<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cNow I work 16\u00a0hours a day, seven days a week just to survive. And for this I had to borrow another \u20ac50,000 to buy the other half of the taxi so I can work all these extra hours.<\/p>\n
On a good day I\u2019ll take \u20ac100 in fares but only \u20ac30 of it is mine, the rest goes on running costs and taxes. And I\u2019m one of the lucky ones because I have work and can feed my family.<\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t bought any new clothes for two years. Luckily,\u00a0my sister\u2019s boy is a few years older than our son so she gives us hand-me-downs. We do most of our food shopping at markets and if we do go to the supermarket we only buy value\u00a0or own brand products \u2013 basically whatever is on special offer. We only buy exactly what we need. \u00a0My wife goes to the market two or three times a week;\u00a0that way there\u2019s no danger of us wasting anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
How does this hardship relate to the current system of political economic control?<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cThis is not the future we were promised. We made plans, took out loans and organised our lives based on the money I was making and suddenly they [the politicians] tell us that we borrowed all this money and that it now has to be paid back. I\u2019ve always worked hard and paid into the state. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope for the future at all because they\u2019re asking for money that we simply don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why is Greece in this position?<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cThe politicians borrowed all this money and made bad decisions, frittered it away on I don\u2019t know what, and now it is us working people who are paying the price.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yiannis is a fruit farmer in Naoussa, a small town in northern Greece, about an hour and a half from Thessaloniki. <\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cThe cost of producing has gone up. I pay much more for pesticides and fuel but I\u2019ve had to cut prices to get business both in the internal market and the external one.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think we\u2019re anywhere near the bottom yet \u2013 things are going to get a lot worse. Our politicians, the global market\u00a0and the international system,\u00a0are playing a dangerous game. We are the guinea pigs of Europe and the world.<\/p>\n
Capitalism is to blame for the crisis not just here in Greece but in the rest of the eurozone too. I don\u2019t believe that we\u2019re living under capitalism any more but imperialism;\u00a0a giant corporate state where the private sector reaps the rewards, while the state picks up the tab when things go wrong and pays off its debts.<\/p>\n
A lot of people are blaming the euro for this crisis. I don\u2019t agree. It\u2019s good that we entered the euro as we gained a hard currency. But we should have used this opportunity to reduce our debt \u2013 the politicians did the opposite. They borrowed money from Europe to give to their supporters in order to buy votes and for fake business ventures. Not all the money was wasted. Some people used the EU\u2019s development loans to start businesses but many others used the extra cash to go on a spending spree buying goods from abroad so the money went back to those countries.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re at war right now. The politicians are using divide and rule tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maria lives in Afitos, a coastal resort in the Halkidiki peninsular, about an hour and a half from Thessaloniki. She makes her living from the tourists, renting rooms and beach umbrellas. She\u2019s married and has a<\/strong>\u00a012 <\/strong>year<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>old daughter. <\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how I\u2019m going to heat our home this winter. Home heating oil prices doubled last year and we hear there\u2019ll be even more rises this winter. Everyone bought wood-burning stoves last winter after the first big price hike but now the wood merchants have put up their prices because they know there\u2019ll be lots of demand again this year. A lot of them are holding back supplies until winter so that they can put their prices up, like they started doing towards the end of last winter. A lot of people have resorted to illegal logging. They are going into the forest at night to cut down trees in secret and storing it for winter. I don\u2019t blame them but I worry about the effect this will have on our woods and forests.<\/p>\n
As for us, we\u2019ll be using blankets, hats and coats indoors to keep warm once the cold weather comes. Food prices are also a problem but we\u2019re better off than the people in the cities. At least we\u2019ve got some land. I\u2019m planting vegetables all year round \u2013 now it\u2019s tomatoes and aubergines, come winter it will be potatoes and onions.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the medicine that is the real worry. I had to buy the HPV vaccine for my 12 year\u00a0old daughter \u2013 you know the one that protects against cervical cancer. The state doesn\u2019t pay for it upfront any more. I had to pay the \u20ac150 and then claim it back. I ask you who has a spare \u20ac150 sitting around the house these days? Then the doctors went on strike and by the time I could claim the money for the vaccine back they told me it was too late and that I should have claimed it within a month. There was no way I could do this when they were on strike. So I lost the money through no fault of my own.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all a lot more conscious of where anything we do buy comes from. The milk, cheese and yogurts have started carrying signs that say things like \u2018this is 100% Greek\u2019. We don\u2019t go to shops owned by foreign companies like Lidl, even if it is cheaper. We have to make sure that any money we do spend is circulating here not going abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanassis, 30, is a market trader in Thessaloniki. He still lives at home with his parents, grandfather and two sisters in a small two bedroom flat. He sleeps in the living room with his parents, his sisters share a bedroom and his grandfather sleeps in the other bedroom. He has given up hope of settling down and having a famil<\/strong>y<\/strong>\u00a0of his own. <\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cIllegal traders on the pavements by the official market where I have my stall are taking all my trade. They undercut my prices because they don\u2019t pay any tax or pitch fees. I have to pay my pitch fees, plus tax on my earnings, which is about to go up to 30% from the very first euro I earn, as well as a new tax of \u20ac500 every three months whether I make any money or not. The guy who\u2019s selling illegally outside the market doesn\u2019t pay a penny in taxes and the police do nothing to stop it. I owe \u20ac1,500 of this new tax but I\u2019m not paying it. I don\u2019t have the money, I don\u2019t own anything so let them come and arrest me. I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t vote in the last election \u2013 they\u2019re all thieves but if I had to choose someone I\u2019d go for Golden Dawn. At least they are doing something. They give people food and deal with crime where police aren\u2019t bothering to do so. People call on Golden Dawn to deal with problem neighbours, immigrants sleeping rough in their area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dimitri is 36 years old. He runs a restaurant in Naoussa with his wife and parents. He has a two<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>year<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>old son. <\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cEvery day we open the restaurant but it isn\u2019t making any money \u2013 we\u2019re not breaking even. The last of the profits from the good times are keeping us going but once that\u2019s gone we\u2019re going to have to close it down. I can\u2019t keep losing money like this.<\/p>\n
In the last year we\u2019ve had to let go of two waiters and two kitchen hands. Now it\u2019s just me, my wife and parents who run the place. I just have one waiter at the weekend.<\/p>\n
The big problem for us \u2013 apart from the crisis in general \u2013 is\u00a0the new taxes on food. The tax on food was 8% a year ago now it\u2019s shot up to 23% – so food and alcohol are taxed at the same level. How can that be right?<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t raise the prices of food and drink in the restaurant because it will mean no trade at all, so instead I have to take the hit. I\u2019m doing this so money still circulates. If the money stops moving, then it really is over for us.<\/p>\n
We still get customers as you can see. [It\u2019s Thursday night, the annual Naoussa film festival is on and there are about 15 customers.] The problem is that they\u2019re not ordering very much at all. Four people will come out for dinner, order one main course between them, a side dish with bread, one drink each and sit there all night. They come out to socialise but they\u2019re\u00a0not spending. It\u2019s okay\u00a0now while the weather is fine but in the winter I\u2019ll be heating the restaurant and losing even more money if this carries on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fear, desperation and anger are everywhere. Greece is moving through dangerous terrain, with extremists filling the void left by the discredited mainstream parties. The Greek Civil War saw brother fight brother as families were split down the middle. Thanassis sympathises with Golden Dawn, while his student sister is an avid supporter of KKE (the Greek Communist Party). Immigrants are attacked in the streets by organised racist thugs. What is happening right now in Greece is a warning to us all of what a depression can lead to \u2013 scapegoats, fear and loathing, dehumanising of whole sections of the population.<\/p>\n
People don\u2019t understand why things have got so bad and so are blaming the rise in legal and illegal immigrants over the last 20 or so years. The question is where will it end? Do the Greek people have the belief or stomach to see through these austerity measures? From what I saw this September, I think not.<\/p>\n
By Smarayda Christoforou<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u00a0is an uneasy calm in Northern Greece right now, with no sign yet of the harsh Balkan winter or the demonstrations against soaring fuel costs and taxes it will bring. I was last here two years ago, during the early days of the crisis \u2013 people were joking about \u2018tin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[87,201,282,283,340],"class_list":["post-7274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-austerity","tag-crash","tag-europe","tag-eurozone","tag-greece"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Greece.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7274"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14923,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions\/14923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoccupiedtimes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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