Greece Shows the Future of Dead Player Democracies

For decades, the Greek government funded social transfers and subsidies with debt while neglecting industrial competitiveness. The collapse of this system is a warning to other developed democracies.

Athens as seen through ancient Greek columns of the Parthenon. Photo by Shpëtim Ujkani. Source.

Adjusted for purchasing power and inflation, every member state of the European Union (EU) has seen growth in GDP per capita since the tail end of the global financial crisis in 2009—except Greece.¹ From 2009 to 2022, Greek GDP per capita declined by 11% by this measure; measuring in nominal GDP per capita, Greek affluence fell from a high of $32,128 in 2008 to $22,990 in 2023, a decline of 28.4%.² Greece is a mid-sized European country with a population just over 10 million people. Per the World Bank’s more favorable figures, Greece is nonetheless today the second-poorest EU country after Bulgaria, despite no history of communism.³ Few countries on the global stage have seen negative growth since 2009, but Greece is one of them and the most developed of the list, where it sits alongside war-torn countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Lebanon.⁴