From the Olympics to bankruptcy

Eleven years after the Athens Olympics, Greece is slipping back into the Third World.

So are Greeks somehow fundamentally flawed? I don’t think so.

They’re actually a lot like us. When credit was easy before 2008, what did they do? They bought gorgeous new homes and expensive cars with borrowed money.

Like many American cities, they built a huge government-subsidized stadium for the Olympics.

And like Americans, they hate their version of the IRS.

But unlike America, their IRS let them get away with it and skip out on most of their taxes. As a result, the government couldn’t pay for that government-subsidized stadium. I’ve heard some U.S. politicians say our IRS should be disbanded, but they ought to at least visit Greece first just to make sure they really feel that way.

However, the biggest difference between Greece and the U.S. is that here in the U.S., if we have a state with a struggling economy, we go ahead and subsidize it.

We send federal money for military bases and highway projects. The state of South Carolina, for example, gets more than three times as much money out of the Federal government as it puts in &#8212 year after year. It can even fly the rebel flag and still, the rest of us are happy to subsidize it.

But all Greece has is a bunch of European creditors &#8212 mainly Germany &#8212 who are tired of paying its bills. As one German told the BBC:

“Das ist nicht gut,” he said.

And I don’t think you need to know German to understand what he meant.