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Re:Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.” by pjmlp on Monday July 06, 2015 @05:33AM (#9837835)
As Portuguese you should also be honest and mention how we tend to have similar corruption cases like Greece.

How people avoid asking for bills when going to the doctor to avoid the extra 20 euros being added to the bill.

How people get things done, because someone has a friend that knows a guy... Of course without anything written and payed in cash.

How many small businesses closed down because they couldn't afford the new computer systems required by IRS.

How Portuguese are fleeing the country to countries like Angola, Mozambique and south American ones in the hope of finding a job that helps pay the bills to those that stay back.

Lots of many other cases that don't make us far from the Greek situation.

Yet, the Portuguese media has the outrage to call us a success case?!

Re:Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.” by luso_brazilian on Monday July 06, 2015 @07:44AM (#9838349)
Hi there fellow country mate. Refer back to the first point where it's clearly referred to our situation as "much similar to the Greek one in nature and extent".

The purpose of that answer is not to identify the party at fault or to explain what went wrong. It is to explain one reason for the increase of nationalistic rhetoric when there are talks of defaulting that loan.

Many people weren't aware that the money didn't come of an abstract "European fund" but from individual countries and helpfully it shed some light on why nationals of those countries consider it "their money".

Also, by showing the amount of money that countries (specially the weakest ones like Portugal) have contributed compared to the sacrifice the population (specially the weakest ones like the minimal wage pensioners) had to make to collect about the same amount (3.5% of all income) hopefully it helps in the understanding that the sacrifices are not being made by abstract concepts and organizations but by the people living in those countries.

As for the rest of your comment it doesn't help advancing or refuting the points explained above so they are a little bit out of place.

Re:Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.” by pjmlp on Monday July 06, 2015 @07:52AM (#9838391)
I guess you are right, but as someone that knows the southern Europe quite well, I find distasteful the way that we and other southern European countries talk about Greece in the media, as if we had an higher moral ground.

Yet, on our daily lives we and our politicians do exactly the same things they get accused for.

So sorry if I went a bit too much off topic.