Part of the austerity measures just passed by the Greek government involves the cutting of 150,000 government jobs over the next four years. Considering the size of Greece, this is pretty draconian.

Greece’s population is somewhere north of 11 million people. Canada is roughly three times that. So imagine being asked to cut 450,000 Canadian government jobs over the next four years.

It’s actually unimaginable as there aren’t that many jobs in our government to begin with (at least not if you only count federal employees).

Perhaps this helps us understand part of the puzzle as to what got them into trouble? Too much government? In the end, it was certainly just spending more than they earned, plain and simple.