„Greece’s economy today is exactly where Finland’s was 20 years ago. Southern Europe, and Greece in particular, are struggling to modernize its economies, open domestic markets to transparency, and implement good and efficient regulation. The Finns, the Germans and other E.U. member states with thriving economies express discontent and dissatisfaction with the European south in particular, saying that they are lazy and egotistic. The critics imply that these are distinctive southern European cultural characteristics, quite different from the Scandinavian and the Continental European ones.
However, in Greece, for example, workers put in more hours than in any other European nation. But this work does not all translate into the gross domestic product, because the economy is not efficient and productive. Instead, it is captured by the same rent-seeking forces and oligopolistic market structures the Finns were experiencing 20 years ago.