I just don't like bundling the "north" vs "south" of the EU.
Yes Italy and Spain were in dangerous waters if you looked at the interest rate differentials with Germany, but they paid their quota of the bailout like everybody else - so they saved Greece as much as everybody else. Actually, they contributed much more than the new North-Eastern EU states, which have a much lower GDP (both total and per capita).
But there is a very real North/South divide in the way the economies are structured and in societal norms (trust in others, corruption, tax evasion, clientelism). The PIIGS acronym wasn't conjured out of free air (Ireland seems over the worst, so we are down to PIGS now).
Doesn't it piss you off, btw, that Eastern European countries with a poorer population than Greece participated in the Greek bailout but the Greeks still think they are entitled to more?
Are you trying to tell me that countries from the former Soviet block are corruption free? In my own experience they are much more corrupted than Italy; there is no correlation between corruption and latitude.
Regarding entitlement from some Greeks, I agree. But you should keep in mind the total net from/to the EU: all those poorer countries, even with the bailout, are getting much more from the EU than they are giving (as it should be).
> Are you trying to tell me that countries from the former Soviet block are corruption free?
I don't see him saying that. I see him saying that countries of the former Soviet block have poorer population than Greece [0] but are subsidizing it.
Also as nations they are poorer, though their GDP has climbed to the same level. They soon will be richer than Greece. In 1990, they were still much poorer, as they were still under Soviet occupation and influence, while Greece had been a member of EEC/EC for ten years. Greece is lagging behind due to its sclerotic economy and clientelism of previous power parties, and Syriza seems to revert to the same.
> But there is a very real North/South divide in the way the economies are structured and in societal norms (trust in others, corruption, tax evasion, clientelism)
This is very poor simplifcation, and pretty offensive too.
It might be offensive, but is it untrue? Note that we're not saying things about people as individuals. We're talking about national cultures, stereotypes and statistical averages.
This is not the same as amount of corruption (note how high China and Saudi Arabia are in the "most people can be trusted" index, while they don't rate as well in corruption indexes). Here's the Transparency's Corruption index map: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
> We're talking about national cultures, stereotypes and statistical averages.
Exactly, stereotypes... and no, they're not true. I live in Italy and know Russia well enough, and Russia is much more corrupted than Italy. How much northern than Russia can you go?
Cultural problem? Yes. Latitude-related problem? No. Linking this to latitude is like linking problems to the color of your skin: you can't change the color of your skin, nor your latitude. Culture, on the other hand, can and does change.
BTW Italy has indeed a big problem with corruption, but one funny thing is that most Italians like to publicly bash Italy, so the relative perception of corruption is even higher than it actually should be, especially vs countries where most people think "right or wrong, my Country" ;)
Well, Russia is neither North or South in this context, it is East. There's also a slant so that it's perhaps Nort-West compared to South-East.
But I also have the perception that within Italy, there is quite a strong north-south divide? Turin and Milan are quite different from Naples and Palermo, also in the mind of Italians, regarding level of corruption?
Don't you think this North/South rule is starting to get a little too many exceptions?
In Italy, too, there are big variations, but they aren't really so correlated to latitude (even if many people superficially think that way). Most of Sardinia is south of Naples, but the disrespect for rules/corruption is much lower (eg in Cagliari, which is a lot to the south of Naples). It's just not as simple as that.
Yes Italy and Spain were in dangerous waters if you looked at the interest rate differentials with Germany, but they paid their quota of the bailout like everybody else - so they saved Greece as much as everybody else. Actually, they contributed much more than the new North-Eastern EU states, which have a much lower GDP (both total and per capita).