11-12-2012, 02:58 PM
While Asia and Singapore are gorging themselves on luxury goods and churning out millionaires by the minutes, we need to look over to the other side of the world to see countless people suffering.....sad but true, haiz.
Published December 11, 2012
Millions in Europe crushed into poverty by crisis
Greece, Italy, Spain displaying signs of a major social crisis
[MADRID] Crushed by an austerity squeeze and towering unemployment, millions of Europeans joined the ranks of the newly poor in 2012 in a crisis that showed no mercy for the old, women or children.
An arc of misery spread pitilessly across southern Europe's middle classes, engulfing bailed-out nations Greece and Portugal and tottering heavyweights such as the eurozone's No 4 economy, Spain, and No 3 Italy.
"The black hole is getting bigger and bigger," fretted Mercedes Gonzalez, a 52-year-old Spaniard who has less than 800 euros (S$1,260) a month to raise her unemployed family in the Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrada.
In July, she was still pocketing the monthly state aid of 426 euros for the long-term unemployed. But the benefit was slashed to 360 euros last month, she said, and in the meantime a Sept 1 rise in sales tax lifted the price of food and other regular bills.
"Things are really getting worse; we can't breathe already," said the energetic unemployed saleswoman whose voice betrayed weariness as she contemplated caring for herself, her carpenter husband and two of her three adult sons, all out of work.
Spain is displaying all the signs of a major social crisis, with one in four workers unemployed, an unprecedented austerity squeeze by the state, cuts to education and healthcare, and thousands of indebted families thrown out of their homes and into the streets. In this country, where two homeowners threatened with eviction recently committed suicide, as in other southern European nations such as Greece and Italy, the economic crisis is sowing implacable despair.
In Italy, the fate of an unemployed bricklayer who was being chased for unpaid taxes moved the entire country. Giuseppe Campaniello set himself ablaze outside a tax office at the end of March and died after nine days of agony.
"You can't expect a self-employed bricklayer to pay taxes even for the months when he is not working. The state beats you up and Giuseppe paid the consequences," his 48-year-old widow Tiziana Marrone from Bologna in central Italy told AFP.
"Giuseppe was not helped out. He felt he had his back to the wall. That morning he had to go to a criminal hearing for his taxes. It should have never got to that. We all make mistakes but he never stole from anybody!" she said.
"His was also a protest. Our laws drove him to it. It wasn't a suicide linked to the crisis; it was state-sanctioned murder," she said.
Ms Marrone herself is now in a desperate situation as she has inherited her husband's massive debts and lives on an allowance of 450 euros a month. She is forced to rely on handouts from her pensioner mother to survive.
In Greece, the crisis delivered another fatal blow. In April, a 77-year-old chemist shot himself in the head leaving a note that accused the government of stripping him of the resources to live.
In Greece, where the unemployment rate was the highest among industrialised nations at 25.4 per cent in August, the crisis has hit people harder than any other nation in southern Europe: 31 per cent of its inhabitants were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2011 compared to a European Union average of 24.2 per cent.- AFP
Published December 11, 2012
Millions in Europe crushed into poverty by crisis
Greece, Italy, Spain displaying signs of a major social crisis
[MADRID] Crushed by an austerity squeeze and towering unemployment, millions of Europeans joined the ranks of the newly poor in 2012 in a crisis that showed no mercy for the old, women or children.
An arc of misery spread pitilessly across southern Europe's middle classes, engulfing bailed-out nations Greece and Portugal and tottering heavyweights such as the eurozone's No 4 economy, Spain, and No 3 Italy.
"The black hole is getting bigger and bigger," fretted Mercedes Gonzalez, a 52-year-old Spaniard who has less than 800 euros (S$1,260) a month to raise her unemployed family in the Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrada.
In July, she was still pocketing the monthly state aid of 426 euros for the long-term unemployed. But the benefit was slashed to 360 euros last month, she said, and in the meantime a Sept 1 rise in sales tax lifted the price of food and other regular bills.
"Things are really getting worse; we can't breathe already," said the energetic unemployed saleswoman whose voice betrayed weariness as she contemplated caring for herself, her carpenter husband and two of her three adult sons, all out of work.
Spain is displaying all the signs of a major social crisis, with one in four workers unemployed, an unprecedented austerity squeeze by the state, cuts to education and healthcare, and thousands of indebted families thrown out of their homes and into the streets. In this country, where two homeowners threatened with eviction recently committed suicide, as in other southern European nations such as Greece and Italy, the economic crisis is sowing implacable despair.
In Italy, the fate of an unemployed bricklayer who was being chased for unpaid taxes moved the entire country. Giuseppe Campaniello set himself ablaze outside a tax office at the end of March and died after nine days of agony.
"You can't expect a self-employed bricklayer to pay taxes even for the months when he is not working. The state beats you up and Giuseppe paid the consequences," his 48-year-old widow Tiziana Marrone from Bologna in central Italy told AFP.
"Giuseppe was not helped out. He felt he had his back to the wall. That morning he had to go to a criminal hearing for his taxes. It should have never got to that. We all make mistakes but he never stole from anybody!" she said.
"His was also a protest. Our laws drove him to it. It wasn't a suicide linked to the crisis; it was state-sanctioned murder," she said.
Ms Marrone herself is now in a desperate situation as she has inherited her husband's massive debts and lives on an allowance of 450 euros a month. She is forced to rely on handouts from her pensioner mother to survive.
In Greece, the crisis delivered another fatal blow. In April, a 77-year-old chemist shot himself in the head leaving a note that accused the government of stripping him of the resources to live.
In Greece, where the unemployment rate was the highest among industrialised nations at 25.4 per cent in August, the crisis has hit people harder than any other nation in southern Europe: 31 per cent of its inhabitants were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2011 compared to a European Union average of 24.2 per cent.- AFP
