Dear Mr.

Prokopis Pavlopoulos,
I understand that a lot of people in Greece arent paying what they should in taxes and I
understand that it might be a huge problem for you, but I dont think its fair that youre
punishing all of Greece for these peoples mistakes. This fiscal austerity is absurd and way too
strict. Do you see what its doing to the people? After 2 years, the share of population living at
risk of poverty or social exclusion was 33% in 2011. That is a huge jump from two years prior
where the share was only 27.6%. I know these austerity measures helped to bring down the
primary deficit before interest payments, but it also made the recession here in Greece become
worse. The recession may have begun in 2008, but 2011 is when it really got bad. The
unemployment rate was at 55%. That is ridiculous. Im writing this letter to you because this has
affected me personally. My family and I werent rich, but we had money. When you created these
austerity measures, my family lost everything. We became a part of that 33% of people who had
a risk of poverty or social exclusion. I have some ideas on how you can solve this problem.
One solution to this problem is stop making the poor pay taxes, but exempting the rich. It
doesnt make sense that the poor is being forced to pay more than the rich, when the rich are the
ones who are able to do it. The austerity measures were created because of the fact that the rich
wasnt paying their taxes or were under-reporting their earnings.
Also, since the unemployment rate is so high then one obvious reason should be to make
jobs. If you were to make new jobs, then the unemployed would be able to pay the taxes that
youre forcing them to pay.