Somebody tell me the secret to this… I never knew I could retire NOW
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If you were Italian you would already know.
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You can retire in the US right now, if you are not picky about your standard of living.
Dammit. I’m just not born lucky.
Well, if you’ve any background in property development you could probably get a cushy pay packet from my government.
To give some background, Fine Fail love property developers, Fine Gael love landlords. As they’re both now in government, anyone who is a property developing landlord is on easy street 
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It’s not really something to be cheering for as it’s this culturally based thinking which keeps Italy on the permanent brink of becoming a shithole country.
Sure, them and Greece. But If you can’t have a little fun and joke around, what’s life come to?
The woke America some are dreaming of.
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It’s basically the entire Mediterranean basin and Balkans. The locals love money and status but despise on principle the hard work necessary for obtaining it.
So most of their energies are spent on creative ways to obtain a guaranteed income, either by scoring a lucrative made up government job (attendance optional), preferably with perks such as kickbacks and other corruption schemes or at worst a low effort job in tourism. Oh yes, and crime. But preferably white collar crime because actual violent crime involves a lot of work.
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You can see the difference between those who left in order to find work and have some say over their lives and those who stayed behind.
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I have a good friend from Greece who embodies this. She came to the states to pursue an Ph.D - obtained it, proceeded to dislike the work expected after, is now a tour guide in Italy…
TBF, her personality is better suited for tourism as it is…
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Tell me if I’m wrong; but wasn’t this all laid bare for the World to see; ESPECIALLY in Greece; during the financial crisis? Seems like I recall a lot of news reports that made Greece seem like one big Ponzi scheme once there simply was no more money to waste and the bills came due.
Think about the US and how you have people who don’t trust and even despise the federal government. Multiply that several times over and it’s what you see in some of these countries.
There is another phenomenon in some of these countries where everyone thinks he works as hard, or harder, than everyone else. So if you drive a nice car, because you worked hard and made enough money to afford it, your neighbor will think, “I work just as hard as that guy but I can’t afford a car like that. He must be stealing or something.” Therefore, why should that guy work hard if the only way you’ll make good money is by being a crook. It’s basically a built in excuse to not work hard. You’re actually the better person because you are unwilling to be a crook.
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Yes. But there are several factors at play here. As @zecarlo explained already, there’s historical distrust in the government as for centuries what passed as “government” was a foreign occupying power, only levying taxes - and in the case of Ottomans - also slaves.
Since most wealth accumulation in such countries occurs - and historically occurred - through illicit means , there is a conflation between wealth and criminal behavior. Therefore, if you’re rich you’re most likely a criminal and the derogatory term “entrepreneur” is used interchangeably with “criminal”.
Now, since the government is perceived as the enemy, robbing them is therefore a virtue. Whether through massive kickbacks, not paying ones taxes or simply being AWOL from your government job, such methods of “striking back” are glorified and socially rewarded as being “cunning”.
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My brother loves the Greek islands and, to a man, every restaurant demanded cash, and said they were avoiding the European austerity taxes.
That said, the auditors did mention Greece was insolvent before they joined and this finding seems to have been ignored for reasons I cannot divine.
Edit: my brother also got a ticket in Sicily for driving too slow, which I have to assume was a squeeze on the tourist.
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It means the political trumped the financial lol.
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Clearly, but to quote my equity law lecturer, ‘it is a fundamental part of equity that you cannot rely on your own bad behaviour as a defence later.’
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One dude in class blurted out, “Only Jesus has clean hands!”. Still laugh about it today when I think about it.
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Hahahaha, that’s a way better story than mine tbh.
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Wasn’t competing haha. Just wanted to share it with someone whom I was sure would get the joke right off the bat.
EDIT:
For guys who haven’t read the original wording:
"He who comes into equity must come with clean hands.”
clean hands doctrine | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute.
This was waaaaay back when there was a separate court of equity in England and was somewhat under the Church’s jurisdiction or something like that IIRC(gimme a break it’s been almost 2 decades). What made the statement the dude I mentioned blurted out so funny was that the maxim almost looks like it came straight out of the Bible and it was so long ago it almost seemed like Biblical times.
I believe this system was adopted by the US (2 separate courts) for some time as well at the time.
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