Analogy for Greece

I've been reading a lot about the situation in Greece, and one thing that keeps popping up is that, depending on how it's framed, either there are an awful lot of people who aren't paying their taxes, or the government is particularly ineffective at tax collection. In any case, the salient point is that taxes that, by law, should be ending up in government coffers, aren't.

The more I think about this, the more that it seems that "austerity" isn't going to solve this problem. Here's an analogy for why:

Suppose you own a store. It's the only store in the area and it sells practically everything a person might want.

Unfortunately, your store has a severe shoplifting problem. Entirely too much merchandise is walking out the door without being paid for.

Downsizing employees isn't going to stop the shoplifting. You'll have fewer people to look out for shoplifters, plus a bunch of people with insider knowledge of your store who are suddenly disgruntled against you and lacking money to pay for their purchases.

Raising prices isn't going to stop the shoplifting. If your merchandise is less affordable (or even just perceived to be unfairly priced), that's certainly not going to stop existing shoplifters from shoplifting, and might incite more people to start shoplifting because they either can't afford your new prices or don't feel it's fair to pay your new prices.

Cutting back on the range or quality of your products isn't going to stop the shoplifting. People who are going to shoplift are going to shoplift what you have. Particularly discerning customers with the means to do so may opt to travel to a larger centre to buy the product that you no longer stock, or to special-order them, which means that the customers who are best positioned to provide you with revenue will have fewer opportunities to do so.

It's true that any of these measures might fix your balance sheet temporarily, for the next quarter or so, but none of them are going to solve the real problem and they may well actually make it worse. To solve the actual problem, you need to either incentivize your customers to pay for their purchases, or make it more difficult for them to walk out without paying. Similarly, Greece needs to either convince its people to pay their taxes, or make tax evasion more difficult.