The November 1 broadcast of ABC World News couldn’t have been any clearer about what’s happening in Greece: Their pampered, early-retiring workforce is stealing from Americans.
Anchor Diane Sawyer explained:
If you were watching your stocks today, you saw a nosedive. The Dow down nearly 300 points, so, what changed? Well, blame it on the country of Greece, long criticized for being undisciplined, and now threatening American retirements.
OK, since we probably were all “watching our stocks” on Tuesday–like any other day–why is Greece doing this to us?
ABC correspondent Dan Harris explains how this all works by introducing us to 2 workers. The Greek–Yannis–is a 52-year-old bank teller, already retired for two years (naturally). The other is a 60-year-old Florida resident–Emma–who is “still having to work around the clock and doesn’t have enough savings to retire.”
How representative are those workers? While Yannis resembles the Greek worker most familiar in the U.S. media, it’s not clear that he’s at all typical. This chart, for instance, shows the Greek retirement age isn’t all that different from the rest of Europe.
Harris explains that Greeks live it up:
And check this out. While our maximum Social Security payment is around $28,000 a year, over in Greece, where Yannis lives, it’s 20 grand more, $48,000 a year.
It’s hard to figure out exactly what is being compared here, or where the figures come from. But you get the idea. Harris goes on to say that Greece “is a country of generous benefits, of pools and Porsches,” with American workers footing the bill:
And so here is how Emma is now paying for Yannis.
In order to pay for all the retirement packages for people like Yannis, the Greek government borrowed big time from banks all over Europe. Now, Greece says it can’t pay. So, those banks are facing huge losses and that could push Europe into a depression. Since America does so much business with Europe, we would be pulled down, too, and that, of course, would hurt Emma’s savings.
I’m confused. Emma doesn’t have much in the way of savings; even still,it’s hard to fathom how that money is at risk. America might get “pulled down” and that would…affect her Social Security checks? There’s no explanation for how that could possibly be true. But there is a graphic:
Oh. Now it makes sense, right? You can see the dollars floating out of the U.S. bank right into Europe.
You seem to hear more about Greek retirees than Greek workers, which makes stories like this fuel a sense of outrage at what Harris calls Greek’s “fat pensions.”
But occasionally another message breaks through, like in this USA Today piece (5/10/10):
ATHENS — A hard life is about to get harder for Manolis Fylaktidis.
Greece’s cash-strapped government is cutting the schoolteacher’s $27,300 salary by about $5,300 as part of a dramatic austerity move the prime minister says is needed to pay the country’s ballooning debt. “It is difficult now…. We have to change our life because life is too expensive,” Fylaktidis says.
Even as the 44-year-old teacher’s salary falls, the government is raising the value-added tax on most purchases for the second time in as many months, to 23 percent, and increasing electricity and water charges.
We might live in a very different world if workers in one country saw what they have in common with workers in another country, instead of being made to feel angry about supposedly cushy retirements.
I guess when you’re owned by Disney, it’s only natural that your news coverage would have the same fealty to fact as a cartoon.
The title of this one?
“Divide and Conquer”
yes, i was watching the news the other early morning without paying attention to what station was on, but listening to it, i assumed it was fox because the news was so silly, the host and hostess yucking it up, the items went from goofy to violent to goofy again, etc.
turned out it was abc, not fox, but i could have sworn it was fox!
Also, Emma is part of the generation of Americans that have endorsed the right-wing military junta in Greece in the 1970s, so a little payback would be in order.
You’re right Doug, it’s a toon.
Heard Sawyer’s broadcast. It cast ABC as the absolute worst channel for news. Its lead story that night was about Michael Jackson’s doctor. And the story about the Greek crisis was almost comical in its language, its emphasis, and its bias. Imagine: the banks had absolutely no part in the collapse of the Greek economy. It was all those damn retirees sucking up money they had no business getting. Who would have thunk it?
â┚¬Ã…“Their pampered, early-retiring workforce is stealing from Americansâ┚¬Ã‚Â. I think you plagiarized Daffy Duck on this on.
My god what happened to you?
For that matter what happened to Mickey Mouse?
Wish I was a millionaire like Diane……..
Get a conscience. Please!
The cartoonishness extends to geography. Just look at Greece; it’s expanded to such a size that it should stretch all the way across the Mediterranean, dropping the island of Crete somewhere in Egypt.
Don’t watch her.Is anyone here denying what most Greek people have recognized already, as the problems that have led to their own difficulties?And the blame is not dumped only on banks or bankers.They know they have to change their ways.Really is little wiggle room left.The libs here in this country realizing the parallels seem to want to export class warfare to explain away all Greece’s troubles.Not working here,and as far as there…….they are way beyond that.Far down the road we are traveling.
You know what that convoluted bit of nonsense and gibberish ABC “reported” sounds eerily like? None other than our troll above–except that the well-scrubbed imbecile for ABC can spell and talk better, and his “staff” is always sure to not let basic syntax and grammar and spelling errors slip through.
This is what is causing all the trouble for these “spin doctors.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-05/mf-global-customers-lament-safeguards-as-regulators-work-to-unfreeze-money.html
Is Dan Harris actually suggesting that Emma’s Social Security check would be safer in the hands of a Rand, Herman or Rick?
I guess Aristotle and Platos goverment ethics are way out dated? Maybe the almighty Zeus could cast a thunderbolt down from Olympus to wipe out a million retirees.
Sawyer should retire. I heard propagandists get cushy pensions.
The exploitation of this as a Greek problem is a gross distortion! ABC has apparently a lack of ethos. Here in the US of A we need a reform that includes all the benefits won by the democratic Greek citizens. Unless of course we want to be a second class country. The rich continue to mine the government for wealth while blaming the 99.
All part of the well-organized propaganda scheme by the wealthy to get us commoners to (continue)support(ing) the neoliberal approach globally. Even Saturday Night Live is part of the brainwashing. They put on a skit with BS similar to the “news” outfits’ coverage of the Greek mess last night. Sad. I loved that show when it started in 1975, but quit watching it in the early 80s as it edged more and more to the right while pretending to be (pseudo)left. Last night, before falling asleep, so skipped through the over-the-air channels (all that’s available since I finally gave Dish Network the boot a couple of months ago), hoping to get lucky. Landed on SNL and once again concluded that it’s still not worth watching. Turned the box off and went to sleep.
Hope the Greeks drag their politicians into the streets and tell the European “community” to take a hike. Somebody needs to fight back, and I don’t have high hopes for us here in the U.S., OWS notwithstanding, though it is a good thing. Too many here are too far immersed in their identity with the needs ruling class that has occurred over the last 40 years (no, it didn’t start with Reagan, he was nothing more than a symptom of how far the disease had progressed by the beginning of the 80s).
Tim you often comment like a dog barking in the back of the room.Annoying, and of little help to the discussion.So again the floor is yours.What should Greece do that they are not doing now?I await the silence.
Ah . . . This posting is not about Greece, and it’s not about the usual personal attacks by the FAIR troll either. It’s about ABC. But then, like some fourteen others by latest count, I keep feeding the troll.
To go on point, neither Diane Sawyer nor Dan Harris appear to have a clue as to what’s going on in the U.S. in general and Wall Street in particular, but ABC is far from the worst major channel for news. For sheer distortion, Fox is in a class all by itself.
Roger my “personal” attacks FOLLOW the personal attacks on me from the rabble above.As you well know.Such a simple thing.But it shows how liberals blank out certain things.You don’t see the attack ,only the counter attack.Classic
12 more months.12 more months
Roger, you are dead wrong. It’s about the propaganda industry in general, including their support of neoliberal policies such as austerity measures in Greece. The ABC episode is just a tiny example.
Be strong, Roger. It’s fine to occasionally ridicule the troll; just don’t feed him by pretending he’s anything but beneath contempt.
And Remember Roger…..Tim never said ANYTHING negative or personal.He is silent ,and invisible right?Actually he is…..a typical socialist.TimN of the socialist brown shirts(a new club).Sent to deride and silence free speech and dissenting opinion.
The media are destroying our country by convincing voters of the lies they are paid to promulgate by the ultra-rich. While a number of blogs are well aware of this latter-day American tragedy, FAIR addresses it consistently, intelligently, and accurately day after day.
Some of the comments here, however, consist of clumsy, often absurd personal attacks on those who have on-point things to say, and it is indeed tempting to respond to them. But such responses merely elicit more name-calling. A better solution, in my view, would be for FAIR simply to screen it out.
Sorry Maynard.For my part I hate to be dragged there.I will try to refrain.Though it is fun to tweak the small group who can’t end personal attacks.
By the way….The ultra rich, and the poor man are just trying to get home at the end of the day to their families.We are all the same in the end.This great seething conpiracy is just the fodder of class warfare.And it’s reason for existence?Re election of those who are shoveling this anti American nonsense.Follow that trail.It will lead you to Obama
Got all that, Maynard? remember, both the rich man and the poor man aren’t allowed to sleep under viaducts. See? Despite the fact that your bottom line has six fewer zeroes than, say, Diane Sawyer’s, you, me, and Diane are exactly the same–poor Diane sits up at night, just like poor old Justine who works at Wall Mart, worrying herself to death about whether to feed the kids or make a car payment.