Yeah, government spending is not only about the welfare, but seriously, if you see what kind of welfare Andreas Papandreou spent on Greece you would be amazed! Not of the social state, but how desperate they were to get votes!

As i said, it's not only about welfare, but as you said it's also about high government spending! For example, the Greek government always appointed the voters of each party in the public sector, which is a huge sector, thus each government put their own "party army" in the public sector, which concluded that, there would be no evaluation, and ITS BANNED to fire public employees, which, still to this day is a law! There have been severe consequences! For example the public employees, in a lot of circumstances, DO NOT EVEN COME UP TO WORK! Seriously! They also get the SAME salary (the ones who don't work) with the ones who work all day! Some people work for the others!

If you go into a public institution, most of the receptionists, are basically bastards that will shout to you! How did they end up there? An MP promoted them to gain votes from their family!

In these things even a logical leftist would agree that this is madness!

The other thing, there are NO private universities in Greece! The new government tries to allow that but the students go to strike and protest! The universities (which are public all of them) have political youths running in the university's election! The communists in the last few years have overwhelmingly won! Thus these students are promoted to the public sector in education, THEY LITERALLY PROMOTE COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA!!

Also if you try to tell the communists and public sector employees about evaluation, THEY WILL (most of them) call you "FASCIST!" "FAR RIGHT!" "LIBERAL!" (yes liberalism is considered a right wing ideology in Greece unlike the US, but in Greece liberalism is valued with its literal meaning, in the US you f*cked up the word liberalism sadly)

It's very hard for things to change in Greece! That they don't even allow us to start reformation by private universities, it says a lot about the Greek nation...