June 25, 2015
Okay, that may not have been the headline, but careful readers would see this is the case. The NYT ran a piece complaining that plans by the Greek government to raise business taxes, as opposed to further cuts to pensions and other spending, could hurt business.
The poster child for this argument is Thanos Tziritis, the owner of a family business that produces and exports a wide range of construction materials. The piece goes through the various complaints of Mr. Tziritis, at one point telling readers:
“Still, it took 20 months to get all the permissions and licenses to begin construction, as papers moved back and forth between Thessaloniki and Athens.
“One reason for the delay, Mr. Tziritis said he was told, was that one of the government employees examining the request was on maternity leave and no one else was authorized to look at that specific Isomat file. The project remained in limbo for more than six months until the civil servant returned to work.”
Presumably one of the reasons that no one else could fill in for the government employee examining the construction request was that Greece was forced to cut back on the number of employees. It may well be the case that Greece regulations are excessive, but until they are reformed cutting back on the number of people involved in the review process is likely to slow investment and growth, as this article indicates.
The article bizarrely implies that Greece has been resistant to making budget cuts, complaining:
“The I.M.F., in particular, is upset that its demands for spending reductions have been ignored.
“‘All expenditure measures have been replaced by taxes on capital and labor,’ said a fund official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘This is very growth unfriendly.'”
In fact, total government spending has fallen by more than one-third since 2009, according to I.M.F. data.
It is also worth noting that, in violation on NYT policy, there is no reason given for why the fund official was granted anonymity.
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