I asked my Greek teacher what they biggest change she experienced moving to the US was, and she said that in Greece, her community prioritized happiness above all else, but everyone she met in the US prioritized making money.
I also asked her what the financial crisis was like in Greece, and she said that you couldn’t find an empty seat at a taverna in her village on the weekends. They barely had any money, and few around her were employed, but they had certain priorities.
Meanwhile in the US, I had a teacher condescendingly tell me that the Greeks were lazy (ignorant of the history that led to 2008). It can be hard to see through certain cultural biases. Particularly when the primary goals are so different.
You should have asked her why she came to the US
She said that the people of her community prioritized happiness, not that the people prioritized community happiness. That might, for example, mean working less to enjoy more free time at the cost of maximizing profit. And, indeed, we can see in the data that the average worker in Greece takes 9 more vacation days each year as compared to their American counterparts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
Why? Because I am the most happy when working at a high paying job with loots of interesting problems to solve.
I would be the least happy working at a high paying job with nothing to do.
Happiness is a comparator, not a number. Money on the other hand can be counted, and thus can be measured. I am 100% sure every Greek ever would be more happy with more money given nothing else changed. Only somebody who found happiness through suffering would ask for less, and be more happy with less.
Plenty of Greeks have no interest in going back because they want the "American" life, but there's no question you ate better in the village, had more community, or had a sense of history - what you didn't have was more than ~35k euros a year, if you were lucky.
Maybe the relative poverty fosters that kind of culture, and a high earning society necessarily becomes atomized, or perhaps atomized societies fosters high earning.
People sometimes have rose-colored glasses about emigrating to the US.
Eventually, they were rotated to Germany. As soon as they arrived, she was off to England. 6 weeks later, she was back, and did not complain about the US again.
Having money helps a lot in making yourself comfortable when life makes you uncomfortable.
This argument of
Conclusion: $RichPerson doesn't get to do what they want.
Premise: They're under constant obligation to $MoneyMachine
The premise is wrong: at that levels of wealth, the obligation is not real, it's opt-in and you can opt-out at any time.
The conclusion is wrong too: At that levels of wealth, the person can do everything anyone else can do in their off-time, and they have much more off-time than the person making the argument anyway.
It's a poor argument and should not be made.
BTW there must be some interesting story that your Greek teacher had to move to US and deprioritize happiness.
Both are more or less factual statements.
In general, what an individual is doing with his free time, is no one's business.
Source ?
I highly, highly doubt that this is true.
I am talking very about small nukes, cheap, minimal and for personal use as a self defense. Two grams of gold cheap, 1 km evaporation range and 5 km blast.
Very minimal, but as soon as millions of people have one, gather a lot of them in one place and you do some serious damage.
This lady seriously suggests that millions of Thai's will have their personal nukes, millions of Mongolians or Brazilians will have small nuclear weapons each, but Greeks will not, because Greeks are lazy somehow. I don't know where she reads that stuff, probably some comic series.
People in Greece certainly don't prioritize happiness instead of making money. There was a clear shift where Greeks became more and more unhappy after the (still ongoing) crisis. No1 problem is financial insecurity; as a resident (MD) I work 70-80hrs/week, for less than 7€/hour. Prices are comparable with rich EU countries.
can you share your version please?
Like all history, it’s tricky to pick a starting point, but an easy one is the end of 400 years of Ottoman Turk occupation leading into the 20th century with the Balkan Wars, WWI, and then WWII.
Greece successfully fought off Italy in WWII but then was quickly occupied by Nazi Germany for four years. During this time, the Nazis successfully exterminated every Greek Jew. This period created extremely radical political parties that persist to this day. Following WWII, Greece then transitioned into a dictatorship lasting until 1974. Greece presently has the youngest democracy in the EU (50 years old).
The past 500 years have been hard on Greece, and the past century was no exception. Modern Greece is a young country with tons of recent scars that have led to corruption and bribery that a healthier nation may not have developed as intensely. My grandfather fled the region with his father in the early twentieth century when the Italian army began regularly hanging people in their town square. It really traumatized him.
Anyway, 2008 wasn’t some event that happened in a vacuum. There were many events that shaped the country leading up to it. To simply claim it happened because the Greeks were lazy is itself a lazy take.
A very good book on the topic is Inside Hitler’s Greece[0].
I'd bet that she was wealthy relative to the average Greek, but was perceived as "regular" because they are middle class relative to the rest of the west. The wealthy in the the US can prioritize happiness above all else. On average, Greeks works the longest hours in Europe, which is more than the average American.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/world/europe/greece-six-d...
Either they were a liar or an idiot.
Greece is the worst example as it is highly optimised for money and not social happiness/success. There is a reason that fraud is rampant and no one pays taxes unless they have to.