Why do you want to follow all possible mistakes that Greeks have done? “Prima Casa for all” will become “Prima Casa for no one”

Part 1

(to read part 2, click here)

I have been reading several articles lately, regarding the intention to increase the number of eligible person for “Prima Casa”. Instead of the ones who don’t have any property on their name, now there is an announced intention to include more categories in the project. In the same time, the available resources cannot support not even the existing demand.

“Then why do we want to increase the number of potential applicants?” one may ask.

“In order to give the chance to more people to obtain the property of their dreams” the politicians will reply.

“In order for politicians to appear popular, I would comment and I will explain to you why.

A cheap populist trick that Greek politicians followed for decades…
There was a moment in Greece when things were under control, but there were many people without money. The state was mainly helping some handicapped persons, some widows, few single mothers and few more people.

In the early 80s this started to change. How? By receiving loans and distributing them to people, in order to increase their disposable income. The politicians who did this procedure were very inventive and found many excuses in order to distribute money. People received help for:

• Being handicapped
• Having fought in the war with Germans
• Being unemployed
• Having remained widow
• Being single mother
• Going to early retirement, especially women
• Low income pensioners
• And tens of other reasons

In theory, everything was ok. The politicians announced that they gave money to “all people that needed it”. But very soon it was found that…

• Hundreds of thousands of people “became handicapped” just in order to receive the monthly help (of some hundreds of Euro). So, together with the really disabled persons, we ended up having taxi drivers declared blind and other “lovely stories”. So, while during peace a society has 0.5 – 1% of people with serious disabilities, some regions of Greece have 5 – 7%, as if there was a war…
• How many people did fight the Germans and were still alive in the 80s? Looks like they were tens of thousands, even persons who were 3 – 5 years old when the Germans had invaded in Greece (some children have it in their blood…)
• Noone controlled if someone was really unemployed or not. So tens of thousands of “unemployed” persons receive help, while properly working.
• Starting with the idea of helping a widow, we reached the status of 90s, when thousands of old Greek men got married to lovely ladies from Eastern Europe, younger by 20 – 40 years. Why these ladies were so eager to get married to them? Because once these guys died, they continued to receive their husband’s pension. (“Love is blind”…)
• During the last years Greece also discovered that some tens of thousands of people had died but their pension was collected by their relatives. Noone could control (maybe they just received it, in order to forward it to the… other world…)
• Women could retire after just 15 years of work. So we created a class of ladies who worked till their 35 – 40 years and then they became pensioners for the rest of their life. Also hundreds of thousands of other ladies became pensioners at their 45 – 55 years. Not to mention special categories of Greek population (army officers etc) who could get a pension at their 42 – 45 years old and continue their life, working “black”.
• Pensioners with low income were identified just by their declaration. It took years to the Greek state to connect this declaration to the real status of someone.

Lack of control – lack of funds
All the above show two clear problems:

• Soon any control was lost and everyone was doing whatever he / she wanted to. Why? “In the name of freedom, justice” etc.
• The necessary funds to pay all these people increased so much, that they practically struggled the Greek pension and welfare system.

Why? Because politicians spent money they didn’t have, giving them without control to people, who decided that this is fair for them and they deserve it.

Why to create the same problem in Romania and especially in the Real Estate segment?
I am really curious… Why do we want to create the same situation in Romania? And especially why in the Real Estate segment, which is supposed to be the most “modern and healthy” part of the economy?

Tomorrow:

What will happen in Romania if we add eligible persons to “Prima Casa” without having the necessary funds