Everyday life and reforms
So what’s the priority, implementing reforms or focusing on issues of everyday life? Usually governments start with promises regarding the former and end up with distributions of financial aid, invoking a shift to the latter. In truth, the problems of everyday life are not the same for everyone: For one person it may be that their salary is gone by the middle of the month, for another that they pay tolls to go to work, for another that they are tortured every day in traffic on Kifissou Avenue or on Thessaloniki’s flyover. But the most important thing is that in a country like Greece, which lags on so many levels, everyday life cannot improve significantly and steadily without major reforms.
Look at the ESY national healthcare service: the years-long spending cuts combined with the new health needs that arise from modern living conditions, along with with the great (and very expensive) achievements in genetics and digital technology, require reforms, the regeneration of the system. If the national healthcare service was left to do its job, instead of being dismantled for the benefit of the private – and essentially monopoly – sector, it could work wonders. The problem is the political will is lacking, even for individual arrangements that would however have substance.
There are two specific examples: First, the University of Piraeus has proposed the creation of a scheme similar to those operating in other countries (such as France), which would reduce private health expenditure from 40% (a pan-European record) to 15% of the total – with moderate forecasts, and that means a reduction of about 1.5 billion euros. The proposal was scorned – it is against the interests of some people.
Second, there was a proposal to double the salaries of ESY doctors, which is what Romania did last year and reversed the flight of its doctors abroad. The annual cost of wages is 560 million euros. With an additional 110 million euros they will increase by 20%, with 185 million euros by 40% and with 560 million euros they would double. It is a matter of priorities. Should we have acceptable salaries for doctors or, for example, spend 400 million euros to increase all pensions and another x million for a 3-year tax exemption for those who have houses to rent?
Then, there is the housing crisis. How do they deal with it elsewhere? They boost the housing supply. Portugal will spend 2.7 billion euros from the EU Recovery Fund on building 26,000 social housing units, Spain will spend a billion euros on 20,000 houses, and Italy another billion for 10,000 houses. A total of seven EU countries will spend 5.5 billion euros to boost the supply with social housing schemes.
In Greece, social housing does not exist, there is no organization that oversees its construction. There is no interest from the state. The money is there, but so far they are – scandalously – given as loans that boost housing demand, drive up prices and send rents skyrocketing. So another 2 billion euros will be given for the purchase of houses less than 15 years old and, to cover the shortfall in housing supply, those who agree to rent their extra houses will be exempted from the relevant tax for three years.
There is also a symbolism in the decision. It completes the cycle of tax evasion and avoidance in the construction sector, the most sinful field. There is another obvious peculiarity. One would even think of exempting from income tax for some years those who offer to cover the shortfall in the supply of labor in the tourism industry (hotels, catering, construction and elsewhere). Wage labor is one thing, property is quite another.
