UPDATE: The data in this diary came from a Guardian article that has since been retracted. Please see this diary for the full story.
At this rate, Greece will be entirely depopulated in ten years. Will the last person left in Greece turn out the lights?
Some interesting new emigration numbers are in this Guardian report, which details how the pillage of countries on the European periphery has triggered new outward migration patterns and some pretty astonishing numbers.
It concludes:
Given the state of its economy, it is no surprise that Greece is in the same boat. In 2010, 1.21 million people emigrated, according to the World Bank, equalling 10.8% of the population. The top destinations were Germany, Australia, Canada, Albania, Turkey, UK, Cyprus, Israel and Belgium. Skilled Greeks are particularly likely to leave – in 2010, 4,886 physicians emigrated, meaning that Greece lost 9.4% of its doctors in just one year.
Greece appears to be, by far the worst case. No country can sustain more than 10% outward migration over even a small number of successive years. As the article indicates, it's the professional class with the savings and mobility to leave who are emigrating. Greece has plenty of people without the resources or skills required to emigrate. They will stay behind. But it's still a strange and fairly scary number. It demonstrates the massive impact that the extractionary policies of the 1% can have on an entire country.
One thing that I found fascinating about the article is the phenomenon of people moving from more developed countries like Portugal and Ireland to places like Angola and Brazil -- developing countries with lower standards of living but higher economic growth. This seems to indicate that the populations there are starting to believe that austerity is a permanent state of the economy. At what point do you lose enough faith in your own system that you think Angola is a better bet?
At any rate, this is a testament to the huge and ongoing disruption that is taking place in Europe right now. You have to wonder -- how did it come to pass that a handful of banks and big pools of money acquired the power to impose change on such a massive scale on sovereign foreign governments? How long will they be allowed to keep the power?
Greece has to lose 10% of its population per annum so that Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale don't make a sad over their bond investments?
Really?
What is more important here, an entire country's demographics and future -- or a few banks?
