Never mind Greece, what about here? If anyone's interested..... stick with this......... Before bureaucracy got out of hand..... towns had a "Council" and a Chamber of Trade. Counties also had a Council which mostly dealt with more "Rural" matters.
Back then, the bin men called every week, the streets were swept clean by blokes pushing a bin-barrow with a shovel and a broom on it. Out in the countryside, there were funny little huts with a large box-barrow (like a small cart) and they were for "The Lengthsman" who kept the roads relatively clean and made sure large puddles didn't form by cutting a channel through the verge for the rainwater to run away.
In the town, "The Councillors" were mostly men who ran a business and the Council was closely allied to The Chamber of Trade. The Council ensured that essential services were maintained but had an eye on "The Rates" and their idea was "to keep the rates down". The Chamber of Trade tried to ensure that the towns were not overun by too many of the same sort of shops or those which might "lower the tone" of the town. You might look upon that as restrictive practice but it ensured that "everyone made a living" and everything you ever needed was on sale somewhere in the town.
Suddenly (!!!) there was an explosion of change, massive (usually horrible looking) buildings were constructed to house the huge increase in Council bureaucrats..... This was on a town and a county scale.
That gave rise to a new phrase, "The Public Sector". If you worked for "The Council" you were a "Public Sector Worker". Men (it was mostly men but there were women too) who actually did some work (Blue Collar Workers) were frowned on, looked down on and regarded as a nuisance but a necessary expense. The bureaucrats (White Collar Workers) were regarded as the cream and people to be looked up to.
Of course, in those massive buildings there just had to be a hierarchy...... This led to "Empire Building" and with it the accompanying high salary. (Such people didn't have wages, heck, that was for the riff-raff Blue collar workers).
Now if you were ever to become "a somebody", you needed friends higher up the money tree than you....
If you were already part way up, things worked out like this:-
You (mister B) thought you deserved more than you were getting so you approached your "high-up" friend (mister A) to see what he could do for you. Told that there were no vacancies at that time on the next step of your ladder, your friend asked to "Leave it with me and I'll see what I can do". After some thought mister A called mister B to his office and told him what he'd decided. Mister B had a department with 12 underlings so it was decided that the department was to be split in to two. Each department of 6 underlings would need a department head (mister C and mister D) and those two would need someone as head of them, = mister B.
So mister B then got a step up the ladder with an appropriate increased salary and two new department heads were needed but with less seniority and a lesser salary than mister B had been getting of course.
Now when something came in to mister B's departments requiring a senior decision, the underlings realised they couldn't make such a decision so it was passed to mister D. He realised he wasn't senior enought to decide so it was sent to mister C's department, The underlings again realised it required a senior decision so it was sent to mister C. He decided he wasn't senior enough to decide and knowing it had already been passed on from mister Ds department, he sent it up to mister B who made the decision as he would have done under the previous system.
That happened so much, it was realised it was all getting out of hand and those nuisances who didn't work "in the Public Sector" were getting wind of it and were getting restless so something had to be done....
Someone had the bright idea of paying Councillors "a nice little earner" so you got some more militant minded Public Sector oriented representatives who put themselves about as Public Sector servants who were going to ensure "The Public" got the services they deserved....... Some reorganisation was required....... Lots of those awful Blue Collar shirkers would have to go and those left would have to find ways of doing more work faster.......
Empire building was out but in came a different sort with more highly paid "Executives" who, of course have "Deputies" who have their own Deputies who have numerous underlings of one sort or another and the last time I saw any figures, there were over 600 of these "Executives" who earned MORE than the Prime Minister.
Now going back to Greece...... I see one of the demands by the European "financiers" is that Greece "reduce the Public Sector"...... It needs reducing here, it's got out of hand so start at the top and work down?
It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.
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