Lazy workers?

What is this notion of being lazy? It's based on even racist kinds of stereotypes, the stereotype that people who live in cold countries work harder and people who live in warm countries like Greece and Italy don't work very hard. But if you actually look at the real statistics, you will find that on average, a Greek worker works for 2,040 hours, this is from 2011, and this is 40 percent more than the Germans and 50 percent more than the Dutch. So who's the lazy one? Italians work over 1,700 hours per year and that is 25 percent more than the Germans.

The problem in those countries is that they have lower productivity than Germany or the Netherlands; their workers produce less income even though the hours they work might be much longer. This problem of low productivity is not really the fault of the workers. It's the fault of their capitalists, because unless capitalists invest in productive machines, invest in research and development to develop new technologies, invest in infrastructure like roads and ports and so on, national productivity isn't going to rise. So if it's anyone's fault, it's the fault of Greek capitalists.

Latvia has been touted as a success story of austerity in the recent period, but the country has managed to survive only by exporting huge numbers of people. The population has been falling at the rate of more than 1 percent per year. Lots of Greek people are migrating or thinking of migrating, particularly the young and educated.