On February 10, 2010 thousands of Greek civil servants took to the streets in a nationwide general strike.

The momentum for a strike grew in strength after Parliament officials announced that the country would likely cut pensions, salaries, and benefits for hundreds of thousands of government employees as a means of coping with its growing deficit crisis. Other European Union members were calling for this measure as a necessary step before any financial aide could begin flowing in.

Athens may need to borrow up to $53 billion to cover its unfunded liabilities for this year. The government has enough money to pay for its operations through April, but if a bailout hasn’t been achieved and implemented before then the system could grind to a halt.

There is a lot the United States could learn from the current, and growing, crisis in Greece. As CNNMoney.com reports, the first step would be to actually set up the bipartisan deficit commission that the president has called for. Before President Obama took office, and shortly thereafter, Republicans proposed a deficit commission which would investigate what money was being spent where, and how it could be most effectively used. More importantly, the commission would come up with proposals to actually cut the deficits without harming the growth and well being of the economy overall.

However, after receiving the endorsement of the opposition and of the White House, Republicans backed off the commission and now call it a tool of “the government” – a government, of which they are a part.

The deficit commission would review America’s spending, highlight problem areas, and potentially avoid the proverbial iceberg that may have already sunk Greece. Unfortunately, a revealing review of our deficit seems like a pipe dream at this point.

This could be an enormous obstacle for the United States down the road. Greece has a large economy on a global scale, but by comparison to the rest of Europe it is run of the mill. The majority of the Greek economy is built on government spending (40 percent of GDP) and tourism (15 percent of GDP). International shipping is also a huge proportion of the economy (about 4.5 percent of GDP).

The obvious instability of having an economy driven by government spending, tourism, and shipping has reared its head in the past two years. People everywhere have less money to spend; and therefore less to spend on imported goods or overseas vacations. As a result, Greece has lost a huge chunk of its national profitability. The government is still hiring, but with less money coming in and more going out, it cannot survive much longer.

But for Greece there is still hope. Eventually, global demand will turn back up, people will have more money again, and the Greek economy will recover.

In the case of the United States, our outlook is not so rosy. Both the United States and Greece carry a large amount of government debt, have official unemployment of 9 percent or more, their service sectors have been battered in the past year, and the only employer still hiring is the government.

The case in Athens is very similar to the case in Washington, D.C., with one major exception. Greece’s entire economy could fit into the American Wall Street Bailout twice with room to spare. Therefore, due to its relatively small size in comparison with its EU partners, Greece can be bailed out.

According to Reuters, just one day after the nationwide general strike, European Union officials had agreed in principal to save Greece. The exact details are still coming to light, but we can assume Greece will cut back its government spending, lay off groups of civil servants, and provide stimulus to teetering sectors of its economy. The rescue will be costly, but in the end Greece will probably be better off financially.

The United States does not have a rescuer on the horizon. China will soon have a larger economy than our own, but saving the U.S. would be far too costly for them. If, in five or so years, the U.S. were to find itself in the same position as Greece today there would be no hope. Every nation in the world would have to put up perhaps the entire value of their economy just to save the U.S. from its growing cycles of deficits and spending.

The EU has a real interest in keeping Greece afloat. Greece, through its membership alone, makes the EU stronger. What reason would the entire world have to save America from itself, particularly if we aren’t even willing to try for ourselves?

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