Certainly, there are significant headwinds that will not abate anytime soon, including an aging population, government austerity, the worst income inequality in nearly a century and more than four million long-term unemployed workers.
Or that Simon Duffy at the Centre for Welfare Reform calculates that people with disabilities have been hit nine times harder than the rest of the population by austerity; those with severe disabilities 19 times harder.
Large social forces like economic inequality, unemployed youth population or austerity policies [19] may or may not have consequences.
With the social fabric of Greek society already highly stressed, the government there would find it even more difficult, if not impossible, to implement an approach that promises the population greater austerity and pain.
Faced with the choice between punishing their populations with austerity programmes and letting down foreign creditors, countries may find it easier to disappoint the foreigners.
Opinion polls at the weekend confirmed Syriza's popularity among a population exhausted by austerity.
Spain's unemployment rate hit record levels in the second quarter of this year, leaving one in four of the working population jobless as austerity continued to bite and fears of a national bailout grew.
Moreover, the airbrushing of Latvia's recent history by Samuelson and other pundits claiming the population has supported austerity is contradicted by the massive protests early on in its crisis.
"It's very clear the message from the Greek population — no more austerity measures.
And now experts are saying that Hawaii's limited capacity to manage its mosquito population, thanks to austerity cuts a few years ago, set the stage for dengue — and still threatens the rest of the country's biosecurity.
