Mythbusters: No, there aren't more Porsche Cayennes in Greece than people reporting 50k income
Remember the story late last year that circulated like wildfire across the Twitterverse-- even picked up by numerous mainstream media outlets-- that there were more Porsches in Greece than taxpayers who declared 50,000 euros in income on their tax returns?
Just google "Greece and Porsche" and you'll see headlines from The Wall Street Journal and bloggers castigating the "loose fiscal morals" of the Greeks.
Rubbish, according to a BBC report that attempted to tackle myths about the European debt crisis that seemed to only fuel cross-border rage between Germans bailing out their more "lazy" and fancy-automibile-driving southern neighbors.
The original quote came from Prof Herakles Polemarchakis, a former economics adviser to the prime minister of Greece, and now a lecturer at Warwick University in the United Kingdom.
Larissa “is the talk of the town in Stuttgart, the cradle of the German automobile industry, and, particularly, in the Porsche headquarters there”, he wrote in an article, since it “tops the list, world-wide, for the per-capita ownership of Porsche Cayennes”.
He was referring to a town in the agricultural center of Greece-- a place of farmlands and cows-- and an unlikely place that would rank as the Porsche capital of Europe.
And now, when probed further, it appears he is backtracking on his remarks, noting that they were "casual" and that his only hard fact he was aware of was "the per capita number of Cayennes in [the Greek city of] Larissa was twice that of Cayennes in the OECD countries".
According to the BBC writer, in 2010, there were 311,428 people with declared incomes of more than 50,000 euros paying tax in Greece.
It was a figure that made a spokesman at Porsche laugh. Lukas Kunze says the story is "ridiculous". In total, they had only sold around 1,500 Porsche Cayennes in Greece since the launch of the luxury car nine years ago.
And while no one-- including the BBC-- is claiming that the Greeks are the Eurozone's perfect taxpayers, it is important to separate the facts from the myth. A story, or headline like "More Porsches than taxpayers who declared 50,000 euros in Greece" can spread like wildfire across the world, spreading-- perpetuating-- a misconception.
This-- especially when that headline is untrue or the facts are distorted-- can do damage to an entire nation's economy, especially if the factors weighing on that nation's success or failure are based upon someone else's mood, confidence or lack of faith in that nation.
Remember the story late last year that circulated like wildfire across the Twitterverse-- even picked up by numerous mainstream media outlets-- that there were more Porsches in Greece than taxpayers who declared 50,000 euros in income on their tax returns?
Just google "Greece and Porsche" and you'll see headlines from The Wall Street Journal and bloggers castigating the "loose fiscal morals" of the Greeks.
Rubbish, according to a BBC report that attempted to tackle myths about the European debt crisis that seemed to only fuel cross-border rage between Germans bailing out their more "lazy" and fancy-automibile-driving southern neighbors.
The original quote came from Prof Herakles Polemarchakis, a former economics adviser to the prime minister of Greece, and now a lecturer at Warwick University in the United Kingdom.
Larissa “is the talk of the town in Stuttgart, the cradle of the German automobile industry, and, particularly, in the Porsche headquarters there”, he wrote in an article, since it “tops the list, world-wide, for the per-capita ownership of Porsche Cayennes”.
He was referring to a town in the agricultural center of Greece-- a place of farmlands and cows-- and an unlikely place that would rank as the Porsche capital of Europe.
And now, when probed further, it appears he is backtracking on his remarks, noting that they were "casual" and that his only hard fact he was aware of was "the per capita number of Cayennes in [the Greek city of] Larissa was twice that of Cayennes in the OECD countries".
According to the BBC writer, in 2010, there were 311,428 people with declared incomes of more than 50,000 euros paying tax in Greece.
It was a figure that made a spokesman at Porsche laugh. Lukas Kunze says the story is "ridiculous". In total, they had only sold around 1,500 Porsche Cayennes in Greece since the launch of the luxury car nine years ago.
And while no one-- including the BBC-- is claiming that the Greeks are the Eurozone's perfect taxpayers, it is important to separate the facts from the myth. A story, or headline like "More Porsches than taxpayers who declared 50,000 euros in Greece" can spread like wildfire across the world, spreading-- perpetuating-- a misconception.
This-- especially when that headline is untrue or the facts are distorted-- can do damage to an entire nation's economy, especially if the factors weighing on that nation's success or failure are based upon someone else's mood, confidence or lack of faith in that nation.
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