Data in New World Bank Report Shows that Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty.
And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction.
This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly but surely coming around to the same point of view.
- The European Central Bank published a study showing “…a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth.”
- A study by two Harvard economists found that “large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted spending cuts, have often led to expansions.”
- The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in recent research that welfare programs are economically destructive because they lure people into dependency because “net disposable income would increase despite putting in fewer hours.”
- A study from the International Monetary Fund concluded that “Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth.”
This is remarkable. It’s beginning to look like the entire world has figured out that there’s an inverse relationship between big government and economic performance.
That’s an exaggeration, of course. There are still holdouts pushing for more statism in Pyongyang, Paris, Havana, and parts of Washington, DC.
But maybe they’ll be convinced by new research from the World Bank, which just produced a major report on the outlook for Europe. In chapter 7, the authors explain some of the ways that big government can undermine prosperity.
There are good reasons to suspect that big government is bad for growth. Taxation is perhaps the most obvious (Bergh and Henrekson 2010). Governments have to tax the private sector in order to spend, but taxes distort the allocation of resources in the economy. Producers and consumers change their behavior to reduce their tax payments. Hence certain activities that would have taken place without taxes, do not. Workers may work fewer hours, moderate their career plans, or show less interest in acquiring new skills. Enterprises may scale down production, reduce investments, or turn down opportunities to innovate. …Over time, big governments can also create sclerotic bureaucracies that crowd out private sector employment and lead to a dependency on public transfers and public wages. The larger the group of people reliant on public wages or benefits, the stronger the political demand for public programs and the higher the excess burden of taxes. Slowing the economy, such a trend could increase the share of the population relying on government transfers, leading to a vicious cycle (Alesina and Wacziarg 1998). Large public administrations can also give rise to organized interest groups keener on exploiting their powers for their own benefit rather than facilitating a prosperous private sector (Olson 1982).
European Central Bank Research Shows that Government Spending Undermines Economic Performance
Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal in order to prop up these big government policies.
So it’s especially noteworthy that economists at the European Central Bank have just produced a study showing that government spending is unambiguously harmful to economic performance. Here is a brief description of the key findings.
…we analyse a wide set of 108 countries composed of both developed and emerging and developing countries, using a long time span running from 1970-2008, and employing different proxies for government size… Our results show a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth. …Interestingly, government consumption is consistently detrimental to output growth irrespective of the country sample considered (OECD, emerging and developing countries).
There are two very interesting takeaways from this new research. First, the evidence shows that the problem is government spending, and that problem exists regardless of whether the budget is financed by taxes or borrowing. Unfortunately, too many supposedly conservative policy makers fail to grasp this key distinction and mistakenly focus on the symptom (deficits) rather than the underlying disease (big government).
The second key takeaway is that Europe’s corrupt political elite is engaging in a classic case of Mitchell’s Law, which is when one bad government policy is used to justify another bad government policy. In this case, they undermined prosperity by recklessly increasing the burden of government spending, and they’re now using the resulting fiscal crisis as an excuse to promote inflationary monetary policy by the European Central Bank.
The ECB study, by contrast, shows that the only good answer is to reduce the burden of the public sector. Moreover, the research also has a discussion of the growth-maximizing size of government.
… economic progress is limited when government is zero percent of the economy (absence of rule of law, property rights, etc.), but also when it is closer to 100 percent (the law of diminishing returns operates in addition to, e.g., increased taxation required to finance the government’s growing burden – which has adverse effects on human economic behaviour, namely on consumption decisions).
This may sound familiar, because it’s a description of the Rahn Curve, which is sort of the spending version of the Laffer Curve. This video explains.
The key lesson in the video is that government is far too big in the United States and other industrialized nations, which is precisely what the scholars found in the European Central Bank study.
Another interesting finding in the study is that the quality and structure of government matters.
Growth in government size has negative effects on economic growth, but the negative effects are three times as great in non-democratic systems as in democratic systems. …the negative effect of government size on GDP per capita is stronger at lower levels of institutional quality, and ii) the positive effect of institutional quality on GDP per capita is stronger at smaller levels of government size.
The simple way of thinking about these results is that government spending doesn’t do as much damage in a nation such as Sweden as it does in a failed state such as Mexico.
Last but not least, the ECB study analyzes various budget process reforms. There’s a bit of jargon in this excerpt, but it basically shows that spending limits (presumably policies similar to Senator Corker’s CAP Act or Congressman Brady’s MAP Act) are far better than balanced budget rules.
…we use three indices constructed by the European Commission (overall rule index, expenditure rule index, and budget balance and debt rule index). …The former incorporates each index individually whereas the latter includes interacted terms between fiscal rules and government size proxies. Particularly under the total government expenditure and government spending specifications…we find statistically significant positive coefficients on the overall rule index and the expenditure rule index, meaning that having these fiscal numerical rules improves GDP growth for these set of EU countries.
This research is important because it shows that rules focusing on deficits and debt (such as requirements to balance the budget) are not as effective because politicians can use them as an excuse to raise taxes.
At the risk of citing myself again, the number one message from this new ECB research is that lawmakers – at the very least – need to follow Mitchell’s Golden Rule and make sure government spending grows slower than the private sector. Fortunately, that can happen, as shown in this video.
But my Golden Rule is just a minimum requirement. If politicians really want to do the right thing, they should copy the Baltic nations and implement genuine spending cuts rather than just reductions in the rate of growth in the burden of government.
Will You Be Able to Protect Your Family if Politicians Destabilize Society?
About a week ago, I wrote that people in western nations need the freedom to own guns just in case there are riots, chaos, and social disarray when welfare states collapse.
Much to my surprise and pleasure, this resulted in an invitation to appear on the National Rifle Association’s webcast to discuss the issue.
As I noted in the interview, I’m just a fiscal policy wonk, but the right to keep and bear arms should be a priority for anyone who believes in freedom and responsibility. And even though I only have a couple of guns, you can see that I’m raising my kids to have a proper appreciation for the Second Amendment.
I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we suffer societal breakdown, but I won’t be too surprised if it happens in some European countries. We’ve already seen the challenges faced by disarmed Brits during recent riots in the United Kingdom.
In the NRA interview, I pointed out that law enforcement is one of the few legitimate functions of government, so it is utterly despicable when politicians fail to fulfill that responsibility and also deprive households from having the ability to protect themselves.
Last but not least, watch this video if you want to be inspired about protecting the Second Amendment. Pay close attention around the five-minute mark.
Five Lessons for America from the European Fiscal Crisis
I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation of what went wrong in Europe and what should happen in the United States to avoid a similar meltdown.
I particularly like the five lessons she identifies.
1. Higher taxes lead to higher spending, not lower deficits. Miss Morandotti looks at the evidence from Europe and shows that politicians almost always claim that higher taxes will be used to reduce red ink, but the inevitable result is bigger government. This is a lesson that gullible Republicans need to learn – especially since some of them want to acquiesce to a tax hike as part of the “Supercommitee” negotiations.
2. A value-added tax would be a disaster. This was music to my ears since I have repeatedly warned that the statists won’t be able to impose a European-style welfare state in the United States without first imposing this European-style money machine for big government.
3. A welfare state cripples the human spirit. This was the point eloquently made by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum in a recent video.
4. Nations reach a point of no return when the number of people mooching off government exceeds the number of people producing. Indeed, Miss Morandotti drew these two cartoons showing how the welfare state inevitably leads to fiscal collapse.
5. Bailouts don’t work. This also was a powerful lesson. Imagine how much better things would be in Europe if Greece never received an initial bailout. Much less money would have been flushed down the toilet and this tough-love approach would have sent a very positive message to nations such as Portugal, Italy, and Spain about the danger of continued excessive spending.
If I was doing this video, I would have added one more message. If nations want a return to fiscal sanity, they need to follow “Mitchell’s Golden Rule,” which simply states that the private sector should grow faster than the government.
This rule is not overly demanding (spending actually should be substantially cut, including elimination of departments such as HUD, Transportation, Education, Agriculture, etc), but if maintained over a lengthy period will eliminate all red ink. More importantly, it will reduce the burden of government spending relative to the productive sector of the economy.
Unfortunately, the politicians have done precisely the wrong thing during the Bush-Obama spending binge. Government has grown faster than the private sector. This is why this new video is so timely. Europe is collapsing before our eyes, yet the political elite in Washington think it’s okay to maintain business-as-usual policies.
Please share widely…before it’s too late.
Who’s Winning the Race to Fiscal Destruction: Europe or the United States?
Even though the unwashed masses decided that I didn’t win my stimulus debate in New York City, I continue my fight for the hearts and minds of the American people.
I’m now taking part in a debate for U.S. News & World Report on “Who Is Handling Its Debt Crisis Better: United States or Europe?”
This was a tough question. I asked the organizer whether I could vote none of the above, but I was told I had to pick an option.
As you can see, I said the United States was doing a better job – but only by default.
Our long-run outlook is grim, but at least we still have time to reform the entitlement programs and save America… The only major difference is that European nations are farther down the path to fiscal collapse. The welfare state was adopted earlier in Europe and government spending among euro nations now consumes a staggering 49 percent of economic output. This heavy fiscal burden, especially when combined with onerous tax systems, helps explain why growth is anemic. …the United States still can turn things around. Greece, Italy, and other welfare states have probably passed the point of no return, but it’s still possible for American lawmakers to fix the entitlement crisis by turning Medicaid over to the states , modernizing Medicare into a premium-support system, and transitioning to a system of personal retirement accounts for younger workers. If those reforms don’t take place, the consequences won’t be pleasant. To be blunt, there won’t be an IMF to bail out the United States.
For all intents and purposes, I contend that America can be saved if something like the Ryan budget is approved.
You can vote on this page on whether you like or dislike what I said, as well as what the other participants said.
Helping to Explain Greece’s Collapse in a Single Picture
Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting government grow faster than the private sector.
As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse.
But that’s the good news — at least relatively speaking. Over the next few decades, the problems will get much worse because of demographic change and unsustainable promises to spend other people’s money.
(By the way, America will suffer the same fate in the absence of reforms.)
Here’s one stark indicator of why Greece is in the toilet.
Look at the skyrocketing number of people riding in the wagon of government dependency (and look at these cartoons to understand why this is so debilitating).
By the way, Greece’s population only increased by a bit more than 16 percent during this period. Yet the number of bureaucrats jumped by far more than 100 percent.
And don’t forget that this chart just looks at the number of bureaucrats, not their excessive pay and bloated pensions.
With this in mind, do you agree with President Obama and want to squander American tax dollars on a bailout for Greece?
Happy Fiscal New Year (with an Unhappy Obama Hangover)
Today, October 1, is the first day of the 2012 fiscal year.
And if you’re wondering why America’s economy seems to have a hangover (this cartoon is a perfect illustration), it’s because politicians had a huge party with our money in FY2011.
We don’t have final numbers for the fiscal year that just ended, but let’s look at the CBO Monthly Budget Report, the CBO Economic and Budget Update, and the OMB Historical Tables, and see whether there’s anything worth celebrating.
- The federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in FY2011, more money than any government has ever spent in a 12-month period in the history of the world.
- The FY2011 budget is nearly double the burden of federal spending just 10 years earlier, when federal outlays consumed “only” $1.86 trillion.
- The federal budget in FY2011 consumed about 24 percent of national output, up sharply compared to a spending burden in FY2001 of “just” 18.2 percent of GDP.
- Defense spending is too high, and has increased by about $400 billion since 2001, but the vast majority of the additional spending is for domestic spending programs.
- Federal tax revenue in FY2011 will be about $2.25 trillion, an increase of 7-8 percent over FY2010 levels.
- Economic stagnation has affected tax revenues, which are lower than the $2.6 trillion level from FY2007.
- Federal receipts amount to about 15.3 percent of GDP, below the long-run average of 18 percent of GDP.
- The Congressional Budget Office does predict that revenues will rise above the 18-percent average – without any tax increases – by the end of the decade.
- Record levels of government spending, combined with low revenues caused by a weak economy, will result in a $1.3 trillion deficit.
- This is the third consecutive deficit of more than $1 trillion.
- The publicly-held national debt (the amount borrowed from the private sector) is now more than $10 trillion.
With budget numbers like these, no wonder America has a fiscal hangover.
And let’s be blunt about assigning blame. Yes, Obama has been a reckless big spender, but he is merely continuing the irresponsible statist policies of his predecessor.
Fortunately, there is a solution. All we need to do is restrain the growth of federal spending, as explained in this video.
But we also know that it is difficult to convince politicians to do what’s right for the nation. And if they don’t change the course of fiscal policy, and we leave the federal government on autopilot, then America is doomed to become another Greece.
The combination of poorly designed entitlement programs (mostly Medicare and Medicaid) and an aging population will lead to America’s fiscal collapse.
Tim Geithner: The Forrest Gump of World Finance
One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist).
Now he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal crisis.
And the latest development is that the German Finance Minister basically said Geithner was “stupid” for a new bailout scheme. Here’s an excerpt from the UK-based Daily Telegraph.
Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe’s debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a “stupid idea” and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU’s bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.”I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense,” he said.
All that’s missing in the story is Geithner channeling his inner Forrest Gump and responding that “Stupid is as stupid does.”
...at birth?
Separated...
This little spat reminds me of the old saying that there is no honor among thieves. Geithner wants to do the wrong thing. The German government wants to do the wrong thing. And every other European government wants to do the wrong thing. They’re merely squabbling over the best way of picking German pockets to subsidize the collapsing welfare states of Southern Europe.
But that’s actually not accurate. German politicians don’t really want to give money to the Greeks and Portuguese.
The real story of the bailouts is that politicians from rich nations are trying to indirectly protect their banks, which – as shown in this chart – are in financial trouble because they foolishly thought lending money to reckless welfare states was a risk-free exercise.
Europe’s political class claims that bailouts are necessary to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, but this is nonsense – much as American politicians were lying (or bamboozled) when they supported TARP.
It is a relatively simple matter for a government to put a bank in receivership, hold all depositors harmless, and then sell off the assets. Or to subsidize the takeover of an insolvent institution. This is what America did during the savings & loan bailouts 20 years ago. Heck, it’s also what happened with IndyMac and WaMu during the recent financial crisis. And it’s what the Swedish government basically did in the early 1990s when that nation had a financial crisis.
But politicians don’t like this “FDIC-resolution” approach because it means wiping out shareholders, bondholders, and senior management of institutions that made bad economic choices. And that would mean reducing moral hazard rather than increasing it. And it would mean stiff-arming campaign contributors and protecting the interests of taxpayers.
Heaven forbid those things happen. After all, as Bastiat told us, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Obama’s Failed Response to the Downgrade and the Outlook for Fixing America’s Spending Crisis
President Obama just spoke about the downgrade and his remarks were very disappointing. He uttered some empty platitudes, offered no plan, (amazingly) called for more government spending, and continued his advocacy of class-warfare taxation.
So what does this mean? Other than expecting volatility, I have no idea what will happen in financial markets over the next few days. But I can opine about the downgrade, Obama’s unserious response, and what it means in terms of public policy over the next few years and into the future.
Notwithstanding the President’s cavalier attitude, America is in trouble. But while the crisis is severe, we have some breathing room.
Our fiscal crisis is akin to a very dangerous, but slow-developing cancer. It is not a car wreck with immediate life-threatening injuries.
And there are solutions, as explained in this good news-bad news-bad news-bad news-good news-good news analysis.
1. There is virtually zero chance of the United States defaulting in the next 10 years (heck, probably the next 20 years). Yes, fiscal policy has been reckless and irresponsible during the Bush-Obama spending binge, but I’m guessing it will take another 10-20 years of additional over-spending to bring America to the point of Greek-style collapse. Simply stated, the U.S. economy is so large and so rich that it can’t be destroyed quickly.
…but…
2. The United States does not deserve a triple-A rating, at least for long-term debt. The nation has a giant fiscal problem, but it’s not the annual deficit or the national debt. The true crisis is the $100-trillion-plus unfunded liability for entitlement programs – especially Medicare and Medicaid. This is why America deserved to be downgraded.
…and…
3. The left in America, as exemplified by Obama’s vapid press statement, has no serious intention of addressing this problem. The President has failed to present any sort of plan. His budget early in the year was a business-as-usual document with no reforms and even the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it 97-0. But while Senate Democrats joined Republicans in deep-sixing Obama’s joke budget, they have failed to produce a budget of their own for more than two years.
…moreover…
4. The left is treating America’s fiscal crisis is an opportunity to trick Republicans into a tax increase. That would be smart politics, to be sure, since it would automatically give Democrats the upper hand, but higher taxes would probably worsen the problem of excessive government since politicians would spend any additional revenue. And the kind of class-warfare taxes Obama has in mind would further undermine growth, adding to the nation’s fiscal woes.
…however…
5. After eight years of being corrupted by “big-government conservatism,” the GOP may finally be sincere about reducing the burden of government. Led by Congressman Paul Ryan, House Republicans approved a very serious budget plan that would have reformed both the Medicare and Medicaid and substantially reduced the long-run burden on the U.S. economy.
…fortunately…
6. America is not at the point of no return. I’ve periodically commented about the dangers of a nation reaching a tipping point, which occurs when the people riding in the wagon outnumber those pulling the wagon. But even though dependency has jumped in America, the national spirit of self-reliance, independence, and freedom remains strong. Indeed, I think that’s what the Tea Party largely represents.
But none of this should suggest optimism. We know the solutions, but that does not mean that the politicians will do the right thing. As I said in the beginning of this post, America is at a crossroads. We can either continue a descent into Greek-style fiscal morass or, at some point in the next few years, we can implement reforms.
But, barring some remarkable change in attitude, Obama is mostly irrelevant except to the extent that he can make matters worse by luring Republicans into a phony tax-hike deal.
Wednesday Links
- DON’T FORGET: Today at 2:00 p.m. Eastern at Cato, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty will detail specific spending cuts Congress can make as it tries to rein in the size and scope of the federal government in “Limiting Government: What Washington Can Learn from Minnesota.” Tune in at our live events hub, or watch on Facebook.
- It’s not low taxes that caused the Greek crisis, but high spending.
- A new Internal Revenue Service account reporting rule would drive out foreign capital.
- A defense budget that does not force trade-offs assumes the United States can take on any mission, and that all are necessary.
- If the Affordable Care Act is so great, why are so many people seeking waivers?
Dilma Announces Spending Cuts in Brazil
The new Brazilian government of President Dilma Rousseff has announced spending cuts of 50 billion reais (approximately $30 billion) this year. This amounts to approximately 1.3% of the country’s estimated GDP for 2011. Despite good intentions, that is still a very timid effort in curbing the size of government in Brazil: Total government spending (including state and local levels) runs at almost 40% of GDP.
Perhaps the timidity of the proposal is explained by the fact that curbing the size of government is not the motivation for the spending cuts. Nor is it to avoid a looming fiscal crisis. Brazil’s estimated budget deficit for 2010 was 2.3% of GDP; not good, but still a far cry from the fiscal woes of Europe or the U.S.
Dilma’s reason for cutting spending lies in the helplessness of Brazil’s Central Bank in containing the rise of the real without harming the economy. The real has appreciated against the dollar by 38% in the last two years (thanks in large part to Ben Bernanke’s policies at the Fed). Efforts to contain this appreciation by intervening in the foreign exchange market and building up reserves led to a rise in inflation, which closed at 5.9% last year. The Central Bank has raised interest rates in order to curb inflation, but at 11.25% they are already too high and constitute a heavy burden on Brazil’s productive sector. Moreover, high interest rates are a magnet for foreign money seeking high returns, which drives up the value of the real even further.
Cutting government spending wouldn’t seem like the favored policy alternative of a left-wing technocrat such as Dilma Rousseff. However, it is the best way to bring down interest rates and control inflation under the present circumstances. It remains to be seen if the cuts do the trick, but they are certainly a positive sign from Brazil’s new president.
Greece’s Problem Is High Tax Rates, Not Tax Evasion
The New York Times has an article describing widespread tax evasion in Greece, along with an implication that the country’s fiscal crisis is largely the result of unpaid taxes and could be mostly solved if taxpayers were more obedient to the state. This is grossly inaccurate. A quick look at the budget numbers reveals that tax revenues have remained relatively constant in recent years, consuming nearly 40 percent of GDP. The burden of government spending, by contrast, has jumped significantly and now exceeds 50 percent of Greek economic output.
The article also is flawed in assuming that harsher enforcement is the key to compliance. As this video shows, even the economists at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development admit that tax evasion is driven by high tax rates (which is remarkable since the OECD is the international bureaucracy pushing for global tax rules to undermine tax competition and reduce fiscal sovereignty).
Ironically, the New York Times article quotes Friedrich Schneider of Johannes Kepler University in Austria, but only to provide an estimate of Greece’s shadow economy. The reporter should have looked at an article that Schneider wrote for the International Monetary Fund, which found that:
Macroeconomic and microeconomic modeling studies based on data for several countries suggest that the major driving forces behind the size and growth of the shadow economy are an increasing burden of tax and social security payments… The bigger the difference between the total cost of labor in the official economy and the after-tax earnings from work, the greater the incentive for employers and employees to avoid this difference and participate in the shadow economy. …Several studies have found strong evidence that the tax regime influences the shadow economy. …In Austria, the burden of direct taxes (including social security payments) has been the biggest influence on the growth of the shadow economy… Other studies show similar results for the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the United States. In the United States, analysis shows that as the marginal federal personal income tax rate increases by one percentage point, other things being equal, the shadow economy grows by 1.4 percentage points. …A study of Quebec City in Canada shows that people are highly mobile between the official and the shadow economy, and that as net wages in the official economy go up, they work less in the shadow economy. This study also emphasizes that where people perceive the tax rate as too high, an increase in the (marginal) tax rate will lead to a decrease in tax revenue.
It is worth noting the Schneider’s research also shows why Obama’s tax policy is very misguided. The President wants to boost the top tax rate by nearly five percentage points, and that’s on top of the big increase in the tax rate on saving and investment included in Obamacare. Based on Schneider’s research, we can expect America’s underground economy to expand.
Shifting back to Greece, Schneider does not claim that tax rates are the only factor determining compliance. But his research indicates that more onerous enforcement regimes are unlikely to put much of a dent in tax evasion unless accompanied by better tax policy (i.e., lower tax rates). Moreover, compliance also is undermined by the rampant corruption and incompetence of the Greek government, but that problem won’t be solved unless politicians reduce the size and scope of the public sector. Needless to say, that’s not very likely. So when I read some of the details in this excerpt from the New York Times, much of my sympathy is for taxpayers rather than the greedy politicians that turned Greece into a fiscal mess:
In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools. So tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area — a sprawling collection of expensive villas tucked behind tall gates — and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools. That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here. …Such evasion has played a significant role in Greece’s debt crisis, and as the country struggles to get its financial house in order, it is going after tax cheats as never before. …To get more attentive care in the country’s national health system, Greeks routinely pay doctors cash on the side, a practice known as “fakelaki,” Greek for little envelope. And bribing government officials to grease the wheels of bureaucracy is so standard that people know the rates. They say, for instance, that 300 euros, about $400, will get you an emission inspection sticker. …Various studies have concluded that Greece’s shadow economy represented 20 to 30 percent of its gross domestic product. Friedrich Schneider, the chairman of the economics department at Johannes Kepler University of Linz, studies Europe’s shadow economies; he said that Greece’s was at 25 percent last year and estimated that it would rise to 25.2 percent in 2010.
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