Many Americans, especially college students (like myself), usually don’t spend a lot of time thinking about world affairs. That’s understandable, as college students have a lot on their plate, but this week has news that no one can ignore. When you think about Greece, what do you picture? For me I think of the cooking channel and, some random American pretending he’s from Greece and making food. Unfortunately, Greece looks a little less like the Athena yoghurt commercials, and more like this.
THE RIOTS YOU DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHERE HAPPENING
Protests in Greece have reached a tipping point as the government struggles to get out of debt by passing austerity measures. Around 48 buildings were set fire too during the riots, at least a 100 people have been injured and 130 people have been detained. Protests are nothing new in Greece (or anywhere around the world, for that matter), but they have been everywhere lately. How and why did Greece’s situation get so serious?
Basically, Greece is facing financial melt down. The government has a huge amount of debt and no way to pay it off. They have been offered a deal by the European Union; a deal that will help their debt problem, but here’s the catch: In order to get this deal, Greece needs to pass certain austerity measures. This means they will raise taxes and cut funding to public programs. So basically, they are trying to level their debt on the backs on the people- and obviously the people of Greece are pissed.
SO WHAT?
Now while I can’t condone violence, I think we can all understand the frustration of these people. It’s simply not right too make the middle class bail out their government. It’s happened right here in the U.S. and, judging by the way the economy has been, it could happen again. Governments are supposed to take care of their people- NOT the other way around.
Why should this piece of global news catch our attention? Well besides the world economic factor, we can think of Greece as an example. Governments (including our own) have been trying to pay back their debts by using their own citizens. As college students soon to be college graduates, we are some of the most economically vulnerable people out there. The crushing burden of insanely high student debt could be too much too handle if austerity measures (like Greece’s) were passed in our country. Just in case you forgot, the unemployment rate is still sky-high, so who knows if grads will ever be able to pay back what they owe? We need to be paying attention to this sort of thing, even if to only survive ourselves.
As college students we might think we don’t have enough power to really affect change, but that is simply not true. We need to peacefully take back our democracy to avoid these financial meltdowns and to help the victims of them. 2012 is an election year in the U.S. and college students are a big demographic. Whatever your opinions are on politics, there is one thing I hope everyone can agree on: until we rid or governments of the greed and corruption that allow for such ridiculous debt to exist (like in Greece), we cannot move forward on any other political issues. We should use Greece’s example and take back our democracy now, so that we can guide it into a safe and sustainable future.
Do you pay attention to world events? Is the kind of mayhem in Greece possible here? As college students how do financial problems affect us?
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