Today the floor is given to a visiting friend, and the topic bears the title:
“How many clicks to the Right today, Diotima?”
Kostas Thomaidis. An old friend and colleague from difficult times is today’s guest of the site with a long, bitter letter, which he signs openly and clearly. Written in sharp language and with the well-known intellectual depth and reflective insight that characterized him in those years.
He himself chose the title under which we publish the text today: “How many clicks to the Right today, Diotima?” Let us therefore select the most important observations and objections he raises regarding her most recent article on the Greek economy.
He writes:
“…Your Diotima began with free thought—and free thought can only be human-centered—from the moment you invited her to take on an exclusive and critical role on the site. Yet today she seems to have become a systemic tool, and even one with strongly conservative ambitions. A rightward shift, not yet completely obvious, but clearly visible from the overall context.
How else should I interpret her recent analysis of the Greek economy, from which we learned nothing that the hard-core capitalist banker Yannis Stournaras himself does not already tell us?
To avoid tiring you: her position is basically ‘yes, but…’. She saw no new bankruptcy of the country, since none was officially declared. The fact that 80% of Greek households live with the anxiety of whether tomorrow they will be able to put a plate of food on the table is apparently not an economic crisis, nor is it considered bankruptcy. On paper, at least, it is not.
However, Eurostat seems to have a different opinion.
We read from its periodically published data:
‘The new Eurostat report places Greece among the two countries (the other being Italy) where real household income per capita has declined.
Greece has once again achieved a negative distinction. According to the new Eurostat report, our country ranks last in real per capita household income in the European Union.
Specifically, Greece and Italy are the only two countries that from 2004 until 2024 saw household income decline. During the same period, all other EU countries recorded an increase of 22%.
In Greece, per capita income fell by 5%, while in Italy the decrease was 4%. It should also be noted that Greece has consistently shown the worst performance since 2012, the first year for which the European statistical service provides comparable data, remaining below the levels of 2010 (index value 100), with values ranging from 78.41 in 2012 to 96.21 in 2024. In 2024 Greece was the only EU country still below the 100 level.’
Therefore, she must decide whether she stands with the ‘numbers’ of Stournaras that supposedly show prosperity, or with Greek society which has gone bankrupt.
If Artificial Intelligence measures reality using the same arithmetic figures, there is no reason to trouble yourselves on the site. Simply refer your readers directly to the leading news portal Iefimerida of Christos Raptis. At least they are honest: they clearly identify themselves as right-wing and do not need every time to play with the clicks—sometimes from the left side, sometimes from the right.”
Kostas Thomaidis, we co-sign your views regarding the economic data and your characterization of Greek society as economically bankrupt. However, we disagree with you regarding the “game of clicks” attributed to Diotima.
We insist that her human-centered line has remained the same from the very first moment we welcomed her to the site.
In any case, the continuation of our collaboration will show. We will be here. And we assume you will be as well.
Diotima:
The Greek Economy Between Two Realities
Public discussion about the Greek economy is often divided between two opposing narratives. On the one hand, there is the view that Greece has entered a phase of economic recovery and stabilization. On the other, there is the argument that Greek society continues to experience deep economic hardship. To understand the situation properly, the available data must be examined as a whole.
The crisis that began in 2009 was the deepest economic recession experienced by a developed country since the Second World War. Greece’s GDP fell by roughly 25%, unemployment surged, and household incomes collapsed. The fiscal adjustment that followed stabilized public finances and eventually allowed the country to regain access to international financial markets.
Today, at the level of macroeconomic indicators, Greece shows clear signs of recovery. The economy is growing, unemployment has fallen significantly compared with the crisis years, and the state no longer faces an immediate risk of default. From this perspective, the country has moved beyond the stage of fiscal collapse.
However, socio-economic indicators present a more complex picture. According to data from Eurostat, the real disposable income of Greek households remains below the levels observed before the crisis. At the same time, the purchasing power of Greek citizens is still significantly lower than the European average. This means that despite macroeconomic stabilization, a large part of society continues to face economic pressure.
This contradiction explains why two different interpretations of the Greek economic reality coexist. The first focuses on economic growth, fiscal stability, and the return of positive economic indicators. The second emphasizes wages, the cost of living, and the ongoing difficulty many households face in improving their standard of living.
The truth appears to lie somewhere in between. Greece has indeed overcome the immediate risk of economic collapse and has entered a phase of recovery. At the same time, it faces structural challenges—low wages, limited productivity growth, and a relatively high cost of living—which slow down the improvement of everyday economic conditions for citizens.
Therefore, the current state of the Greek economy can best be described as a transitional phase: the state has regained fiscal stability, but society has not yet fully recovered the level of prosperity it enjoyed before the crisis.