Update on Greek Crisis
With Greece pushed off the stage by the major media, I recently wondered how things were unfolding over there. A few stirrings of news about the Greek neo-Nazi party, the Golden Dawn, speaks to the ongoing threat of civil war. The fact that the country has been in recession for six years - six years! - gives us some idea of the depth of their economic crisis. And the resulting reduction in availability of medicines and health care in general provides worrisome evidence of a health crisis to match the economic crisis.
In fact, we reported a while back on this personal aspect of the crisis:
This latest twist of the Greek crisis confirms the ongoing tragedy facing the Greek people. We should remember them and pray for them and not let ourselves become wrapped up in the financial analysis to the detriment of the human part of the story. In addition, this drop in birth rate should remind us of a much broader and deeper trend that gets lost in the events unfolding as a result of the great economic and financial crisis that most of date as beginning in 2007-2008. This trend has been ongoing for decades and is not reversing itself.
We're (including we in the U.S.) reproducing at a level that reveals a lack of confidence in the value of human life itself. As we acquired more "stuff" in recent decades, we stopped having children. There's much more to this story. It is, I believe, one of the root causes of our economic woes. I hope to get back to this in future posts.
In fact, we reported a while back on this personal aspect of the crisis:
The real real story is what all this is doing to the Greek people - not the government or the banks. The recent riots in Greece were the worst ever. They were covered by the press, but not really in a way that explains just how bad things are in Greece for many of the Greek people.Now we find that the birthrate in Greece has dropped almost 15%:
I just read a rather daunting analysis of the situation. The health care system (hospitals, pharmacies, doctors) is falling apart. Suicides are up 40%. People are giving their children to State agencies because they can't afford to feed them. Violent crime, including murder, is up almost 100%, businesses are shutting their doors. Basically the country is on the verge of collapse.
We're reading too much about all this financial fumbling and losing sight of the real story here.
"The falling fertility rate is a natural consequence of harsh austerity and record levels of unemployment, especially among the young," said Christina Papanikolaou, general secretary at the health ministry. "It is the mirror image of the 25% drop in our GDP since the start of the crisis," she said.But while this recent fall in births is regrettable, and may very well be directly related to the economic crisis, let's not lose sight of the fact that Greeks, like the people of so many European nations - indeed so many Western nations - has not been reproducing at levels that will sustain their nations in the future, a trend that began long before the country faced economic crisis.
This latest twist of the Greek crisis confirms the ongoing tragedy facing the Greek people. We should remember them and pray for them and not let ourselves become wrapped up in the financial analysis to the detriment of the human part of the story. In addition, this drop in birth rate should remind us of a much broader and deeper trend that gets lost in the events unfolding as a result of the great economic and financial crisis that most of date as beginning in 2007-2008. This trend has been ongoing for decades and is not reversing itself.
We're (including we in the U.S.) reproducing at a level that reveals a lack of confidence in the value of human life itself. As we acquired more "stuff" in recent decades, we stopped having children. There's much more to this story. It is, I believe, one of the root causes of our economic woes. I hope to get back to this in future posts.
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