In the previous video, I promised that Greekonomics would publish, for the first time in Greece, official economic data that would dispel every narrative that politicians have told you over the last decade. The time has come. Get ready to see data that has never been made public before and shows the reality of the Greek economy exactly as it is. Those who have seen Greekonomics videos before know that the channel does not support and is not supported by any political party and does not try to promote any ideology. Today, we will talk clearly about parties and policies - with their names and all - but absolutely nothing you will hear here is a personal opinion or point of view. I will only present official data from Eurostat or ELSTAT which my research collaborator, Achilleas Mante, and I have processed in accordance with international scientific standards of economic theory. The Mante - Marinaki exhibition is available from today on greekonomics.gr, the very beautiful site of the channel that Strings Digital created for us for free and is free for any use and reproduction in any media. Also, the methodology we have followed is also available in its entirety in the video description for any scientist who wishes to verify the validity of our work. So today we will talk about wages, the housing crisis, poverty, we will see very revealing data on inflation and we will present for the first time in Greek history the full distribution of income in Greece and how the current New Democracy government and the previous SYRIZA government have affected your income. Please, watch this video until the end. Even if it conflicts with your political beliefs, even if you find me insufferable, boring, or obnoxious, try to see it all because the data I will present here is not for others. They concern you, your family, your own future. Honestly, you can't afford not to know what you're about to hear here now. Let's go see! Subtitles for our fellow human beings with hearing problems In the diagrams you will see, we will compare 3 things. First, the performance of the last two governments of New Democracy and SYRIZA. Secondly, our country as a whole with the European Union average. And thirdly, our country is only among the 10 poorest countries in the European Union. Of these three comparisons, the most revealing is with the 10 poorest countries because these are our direct competition - they are our cubic feet - and if we cannot base our comparison on a comparison with those below us that should also be the most favorable for us, then there is no point in talking about any other comparison. So what we have seen in the previous video is that Greece is marching without any doubt towards the last place in the European Union in all the macroeconomic variables that matter: in purchasing power, in real income, in waste of qualifications, in competitiveness, in productive investments, in every statistic that matters for the real prosperity of the country. Now, in the comments of the previous video, several friends rightly asked whether the 10 poorest countries are outperforming us because they are outside the eurozone. This is not the reason why 5 out of 10 countries are in the euro and most of them even joined the common currency before surpassing us in purchasing power. The reason they leave us behind is one: that they managed to attract investments in productive sectors in manufacturing, technology, transportation, trade, and their economy generated enormous surplus value from them, something that we have not done and do not even have a plan on how to do. I warn you that the data you will see now is even more heartbreaking than the previous video because it depicts the internal anatomy of our economy and the social consequences of the incompetence of politicians over the last decade. I repeat, today we will present data on policies - not ideological criticism, not political stance, not opinion. Only data. We start with the labor market. Let's first look at unemployment as a percentage of the available labor force from 2009 to 2024. This is unemployment in the European Union. We see that there is also an upward trend from 2009 to 2013, mainly due to the many countries in the European periphery that faced a crisis. We have the same pattern, but much more intense, in Greece. However, in the 10 poorest countries, the rapid growth and investments we mentioned before put unemployment on a downward trend much earlier, since 2010. Note that the 10 poorest countries from 2013 onwards have lower unemployment even than the European average since their economies are rushing to converge with the developed countries of the Union and therefore do not let their workforce go to waste. Let's now focus on Greece to pay attention to something that most people ignore. Unemployment in our country has not entered a downward trend. He was in it even before the SYRIZA government was elected. The same downward trend continues with both governments without anyone being able to say that there is any qualitative difference in the reduction. Basically, if I remove the dates and the coloring, it 's impossible for anyone to understand that the government has changed. Also, because productive investments did not come to Greece, as in the 10 poorest countries, our reduction in unemployment led to a rapid increase in the waste of qualifications. In other words, we limited unemployment by keeping wages low and abolishing workers' rights, so we pushed them mainly into low-skilled jobs. There was no real growth that would create quality new jobs. Basically, if we compare today's unemployment with that of 2009, the rates may seem about the same today, but there are 295,000 fewer employed people in the country due to brain drain and population decline. All of this becomes even clearer if we look at the real hourly wage in purchasing power terms as shown by Eurostat data. In the European Union, hourly wages are increasing significantly. In Greece, under both governments, it has been hovering between 9 and 10 euros, with a slight drop during the SYRIZA era and an equally slight rise during the New Democracy period. In the 10 poorest countries of the European Union, however, this happened. Why? Because this is what happens when you have real growth: productive investments increase the demand for skilled workers and thus wages increase, ensuring that ordinary people also benefit from the country's growth. Before we get to the housing crisis, this video is an offer from the Greek division of Freedom 24, which these days has its place of honor within the multinational Freedom Finance because it has now reached 100 thousand customers in Greece. Freedom 24 opened its Greek office in 2021 in a market that the then major digital players considered a lost cause not only due to the financial illiteracy that plagues our country but mainly due to the exclusion - in practice - of the Greek public from international financial markets. In the 4 years that have passed since then, Freedon has managed to spam as much as Greek YouTube can handle... just kidding! It managed to grow from 3 staff members in Greece to 16 today, managing funds of 330 million dollars in the Greek market and exceeding 100 thousand customers in our country! During these years, from Freedom's sponsorships, Greece learned what ETFs are, how the stock market works, what compound interest is, and that there are reliable and safe alternatives for ordinary people to utilize their capital and finally escape financial exclusion and investment stagnation. But there is something else. This significant success of Freedom in surpassing 100 thousand users is a small victory for all of us, the small creators of Greek YouTube, who entrusted us entirely with its advertising. Because we have proven that we have the advertising power to make a good company truly great and that we too deserve a share of the advertising pie, not just traditional media, with the quality of our work. If you also want to gain access to international investment markets, do it easily and safely with Freedom from this link directly from Greekonomics. The platform's certified advisors will offer you daily investment ideas and will be there to help you with anything you need. And regarding the housing crisis, the data does not correspond to the image that has been presented to public opinion. In this chart we measure how much real estate prices have changed since 2015. Notice, the price changes, not how accurate they are. Compared to 2015, prices in Greece have increased more than in the rest of the European Union. However, in the 10 poorest countries - where property prices were relatively low - the increase was much greater than that of Greece. This diagram helps us understand that the housing crisis in Greece is not so much due to rising housing prices, but to the stagnation of incomes, something that becomes even clearer if we look at the percentage of the population that has difficulty meeting housing costs. At the lowest incomes – with an income below 60% of the median – the cost of housing, both for purchase and rental, has been unaffordable for 90% of households in Greece over time. In the poorest countries, however, which experienced a greater increase in property prices, this percentage is below 30%! The picture is heartbreaking for our country and for the housing poverty of the middle and higher income groups. Since 2015, it has declined, but in the last 2 years , it has stabilized at around 15%, while the rest - poor and rich - in the European Union have essentially eliminated it at rates below 4%. We see a significant difference in effectiveness between the two governments in health. Before the global financial crisis, almost all countries had single-digit rates of unmet medical need and managed to squeeze them even lower. Except for Greece, where the debt crisis literally destroyed public health. During the SYRIZA government, we have had a significant reduction in unmet medical care, which totaled 7%. However, the situation worsened again from 2021. Indicatively, in 2024, the percentage in our country was 12%, almost five times the European average. Greece also differs from the rest of Europe in terms of crime. In the European Union, crime reports have a downward trend in the 10 poorest countries, an even more downward trend, but in Greece, since 2016, crime reports have been on a rapid rise. Basically, from the chart it is clear that only the Samaras government has managed in recent years to lower crime in Greece below the European Union average. And now let's move on to the most important social chart, material and social deprivation, that is, actual poverty as a percentage of the population. In the European Union, poverty is not only low but also shows a long-term trend of decline. In Greece, the percentage is consistently higher and, in fact, since 2023, it has shown a slight upward trend. But look at what happens to the 10 poorest countries. This is real convergence. The fact that countries like Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, which even today most of us have registered in our minds as poor countries... we are poorer than them. Basically, this diagram alone is enough to take away the right from any politician to present Greece as a success story. The inflation data is also particularly revealing . Let's start with rents. I will leave the coloring of the governments in these diagrams, but there is no comparison between them because, quite simply, SYRIZA was never called upon to face inflationary pressures during the time it was in power. As with the housing prices we saw before, the 10 poorest countries also experienced much higher increases in rents, which have now subsided. On the contrary, in Greece, rent inflation is still not under control, further intensifying the housing crisis in our country at a time when the rest of Europe seems to be leaving it behind. This shows that our country's policies on the golden visa, short-term rentals, and properties that have been seized by banks were not properly assessed and continue to exacerbate the housing problem even today. In food products, Greece experienced a smaller increase in prices compared to both the European average and the 10 poorest countries. The reason we believe - and rightly so - that food items have run out of stock in Greece is that the prices of basic food items were already high before the onset of inflation, but also that real incomes remained low. However, what is particularly important in this particular chart is that Greece both had difficulty and was much slower than other countries to bring food inflation under control, which shows that the unconventional methods we followed with the household basket and the ministerial inspections in supermarkets, in addition to having absolutely no economic logic, also brought a negative result. The most interesting case is the energy inflation that hit the whole of Europe in a similar way. In Greece, however, prices rose earlier, more, and for a longer period of time. And they only fell when - after popular indignation - the readjustment clause was imposed. So this diagram makes even more obvious some things I've been saying at Greekonomics for years. First, that in Greece there is an energy cartel, which raises prices in a coordinated manner and keeps them high much longer than in other countries. Secondly, that governments have a way to crack down on cartels when they want to, and thirdly, even today as we speak, the cartels continue to undeterred and uncontrollably raise energy prices, without any pretext whatsoever. And now we come to the most essential and most interesting point of the research. For the first time, you will get a comprehensive picture of the income level of all Greeks – and your own income – and how these incomes have been affected by the SYRIZA and ND governments. The data is available up to the end of 2023, so here we will compare the 4.5 years of SYRIZA, from '15 to '19, and the first 4.5 years of New Democracy, from '19 to the end of '23, for which the data is available. Let's start with where exactly you are in the distribution, only now pay close attention to understand what you are seeing. Let's assume that the incomes of all Greeks are placed on this ladder consisting of 10 steps. At the bottom of the ladder will be the poorest Greek in terms of income, earning zero euros. He, because he is the poorest of all, we can say that he is richer than 0% of the population. At the top of the ladder is the richest Greek, that is, the one who is richer than 100% of the population. The rest of us are on one of the 10 steps - or deciles as we call them. If someone is, let's say, on this rung, they earn more than 20% of the population, if they are on it, they are richer than 40%, and in this they have a higher income than 90% of their fellow citizens. Where each of us falls on this scale depends solely on our income. Here we will present the individual data collected by ELSTAT. The amounts you will see concern the total disposable monthly income, net of taxes, which can come from any source: from salaries, pensions, rents, from benefits from business activity, and even from undeclared sources. To be ranked in the top 10% of the population in Greece, you must earn €633 per month. To be richer than 20% of Greeks, you need €867 per month. With €1,074 you exceed 30%, with €1,288 you are at 40%. With €1,533 per month, you are in the 50%, with €1,817 you are richer than 60% of Greeks, with €2,094 per month you are richer than 7 out of 10, with €2,484 per month you are in the 80% and if you earn €3,104 per month you have a higher income than 90% of Greeks. Fun fact: to be in the top 1% of income in Greece, you need to earn around €6,500 per month. Keep in mind that by European standards these amounts are not large. In the core countries of the European Union, let's say, with €3,100, you are below average. So now that you've seen which decile you're in, let's look at a graph of how your income has changed under the last two governments. On the horizontal axis we will place the deciles - the income steps - that we saw before, and I'll also put the incomes in euros again so you can remember them. On the vertical axis we will measure how much the incomes of each decile - each step - changed. Of course, if the change is below zero, this means that the income of this decile decreased. In the first 4.5 years of the New Democracy, therefore, the total change in income in each decile is summarized in this curve. The very poor saw an increase of 5.4%, the middle 8 deciles an increase of 14.5 to 18.7% and the high incomes an increase of almost 27%. We see a reverse trend in the SYRIZA period. The incomes of the very poor were supported by over 45%, mainly through subsidies for the middle deciles from 15.2% to 3.9%, and the richest saw their income decrease by 1.7%. However, this picture measures nominal incomes, meaning it does not take inflation into account at all. If we take the real incomes, as calculated based on ELSTAT data, the picture is completely reversed and the SYRIZA government seems to have benefited eight out of ten income levels the most, that is, not only the lowest strata, but also the majority of incomes above the median. ELSTAT data therefore clearly shows that in terms of real income under the New Democracy government, the poorest lost real income. From 10% to 80% of income, the actual increases were below 4% in 4.5 years, that is, below 1% per year, and the only ones who really benefited were those with very high incomes from the top 20%, but especially the top 10% of incomes, where the percentage increases translate into many more euros. Here we must point out two things. First, the main reason that ND benefited less from incomes than SYRIZA is that it failed to effectively manage the inflation that arose from 2022 onwards. We calculated the overall inflation of each decile and found that price increases burdened the poorest strata much more. Basically, if we do not use the average deflator provided by ELSTAT and deflate each decile separately with its own inflation, then the income comparison becomes even more burdensome for ND. The second thing that is of great importance to point out is that the ND government had much more resources at its disposal than the SYRIZA government. If we look at the total government revenues for these two periods, during the SYRIZA years, total revenues amounted to 88 billion annually on average, while during the ND period they skyrocketed to 96 billion annually, mainly due to European recovery funds. This means that New Democracy had 8 billion euros more in its coffers annually than SYRIZA. To understand the magnitude of this amount, the surplus that the government achieved last year was only 3.18 billion, which is less than half of the extra resources it had at its disposal each year. In short, there were resources already in the public coffers to support lower incomes affected by inflation, but they were not allocated. They were also not allocated to manufacturing, nor to rural development, nor to technology, nor to railways. Where were they distributed? Find it on the diagram. What I personally consider the most important thing in today's video is not to watch it from a fan or ideological perspective, because that way you won't get anything out of it. Being able to understand economic data is something that gives you strength, no matter what political camp you belong to. If you want something to change in this country, the only way is for politicians from all parties to see that you have begun to understand, that your judgment is influenced by evidence, not by narratives. So do yourself a favor and try to assimilate and understand the data you saw. What do they mean for you, for your family, for the future of the country you live in and love? And don't let this video go unnoticed, share it with others, discuss it, and post it wherever you can, because the more people know, the more power you have as a citizen. I am Kosmas Marinakis and these were the facts of our economy. The conclusions, as always, must be your own. See you next time!