Older People in the Context of the Greek Dept Crisis. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

In ancient Greece, starting with Homer’s epic Iliad and his iconic figure of Nestor, continuing down through the centuries to Plato’s era with the character of Cephalus in The Republic, there has been a literary tradition in showing great respect to older people and their intellectual power. However, in the years of ‘late modernity’, it seems that Greek society has put this notion in ambiguity. Within the financial crisis, according to the OECD Employment Outlook, total poverty in Greece reached 13%, (2% higher than the OECD average and the second highest in the EU). Importantly, the poverty rate for people 65 years or over rose, from 22% to 24%, while the combined at-risk-of-poverty and/or social exclusion aggregate rate reached 34%. Furthermore, an estimated 800,000 Greeks are without medical access due to a lack of insurance or poverty, while youth unemployment rate jumped to a record high of 59.5%. Additionally, significant increase in indirect taxes (electricity, food, heating oil) and special levies (e.g.‘extra’ property levy) have been applied targeting the middle classes, but affecting mostly the vulnerable groups. Considerable cuts in current and future pension schemes and social benefits have put older people deeper in poverty risk. Due to the financial crisis, more than ever, older Greeks are pressured by the ‘risk society’, experiencing pensions’ reductions, unemployment in their family and huge transformations in the Greek welfare system. And it’s not only the young Greeks whose ‘biographies’ are no more ‘lives of a linear narrative’, as Sennet argued, highlighting ‘the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism’, back in 1998. It is the older Greeks indeed, obliged now, to acquire in their old age ‘flexibility skills’, or else to die.