Greece's problem goes back farther than that.
Greece is a living laboratory of what happens when people collectively act as though the state will support all their demands, while forgetting that the state can only do so as long as their productivity increases in proportion to those demands. And since the state provides so much and has to tax so much, there's less incentive to be all that productive.
Greece is beyond the precipice of the black hole they created. There is no escape for them. They can't lower benefits without negative economic consequence and rioting. They can't raise taxes without negative economic consequence, and even then it wouldn't matter because most people ignore or evade them anyway.
At this moment, I have friends there sending minute-by-minute reports. Quite interesting. It's like a preview of where America is heading, except that there isn't anyone willing or big enough to bail us out.
