re: #147 chunkymonkey

Right, but why do they need to practice these “austerity” measures? They were spending a lot of money, which presumably should have been stimulating to the economy. What happened? Obdicut eludes to tax avoidance. I’m know tax avoidance occurs all over the world, so if Greece has particularly tax avoidance, please fill me in.

Let me explain in more detail. Greece is a small country, and its economy isn’t likely to grow much in the future. It uses the Euro, so it can’t inflate its debt away by printing more money. The U.S. is a big country, and our economy is likely to continue growing a lot in the future. Relative to GDP, the US was much deeper in debt in 1946 than it is now, and we never paid off that debt, we just kept rolling it over. But it didn’t matter, because our economy has grown so much the total amount of debt we had in 1946 is tiny compared to the size of our economy now. So the answer is, we can keep rolling our debt over because our economy grows, but Greece can’t.