Wherever you sit and stand you will get confronted with private stories and destinies in the Tropic of Greek Austerity. A huge scissors made of steel cuts salaries, pensions and jobs. Within a single month people see their income vanished and they have to cope with just 550 euro to feed their families and in addition pay social contributions, trade levies and upcoming emergency property taxes. At the same time prices of goods and utilities remain high.
Cutting allowances and benefits in the public sector drives into despair many families. Let’s see the case of Stavros, a teacher in a public school with 27 years of duty, married, two kids. His basic salary was 1,100 euro/month and with the benefits he would earn almost 1,400 net. some years ago Stavros got a mortgage loan and bought a flat for his family. Stavros and wife were thinking that they could repay the loan without problem as the installment would be equal to a monthly rent. Now the benefits have been scissored. The loan repayment installments – €600/month -are been directly withdrawn from his salary account. For the month of September Stavros’ salary sharply went down and he received just 500 euros net…
Others got attracted by the banks practices of the last decades offering en mass credit cards, consumption loans, vacation loans and etcetera loans. There is no average Greek household that hasn’t experienced a sudden income cut in the average €100-700 per month; whether in the public or private sector.
An internal “Haircut” of 30%-40% already is taking place. In the income….
Middle class families are desperately seeking for solutions. Anyone?
