Portugal Dared to Cast Aside Austerity. It’s Having a Major Revival.
13 replies, posted
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/business/portugal-economy-austerity.html
Wow! it's almost like we learned the lessons taught here 80 years ago! What I don't understand here is why everyone still thinks freezing up the economy is a proper response to a financial crisis.
Didn't Portugal also decriminalise drugs a few years ago, dramatically reducing deaths? The world never learnt from that either.
Buying your way out of an economic crisis also has its downsides, especially if the next one hits before you have paid off the debt from the last one.
Well, luckily the UK has Brexit and our currency is doing better than ever, so it's all fine and dandy.
I can't take the bait if you don't throw the bone man.
Just to put this in perspective: the ones who are profiting the most are big international companies. Portuguese politicians are extremely corrupt, and will gladly give preferential treatment to friends in high places. The olive yard owner in the article isn't even Portuguese, he's some affluent Spanish businessman.
I emigrated in 2001, but according to friends and family living there, life is as bad as ever.
Wages are still lower than other EU countries, while the cost of life is about the same as everywhere else. Pensions are laughably small. Emigration numbers seem to be as high as ever, with more and more young people seeking fortune elsewhere.
So, either this article is too positive, or the Portuguese are being pessimistic as usual (belly-aching is our 2nd biggest national sport, right after football).
Any FP tugas that want to wheigh in?
at this point its pretty obvious to everybody below the 1% that economic growth and wealth inequality are uncoupled from each other. We can have a booming economy globally and still see workers wages shrink as long as we keep letting the policy makers get away without acting.
Debt-wise a lot of the anti-austerity countries are in a much better state, and posting budget surpluses, than several countries that went for hardcore austerity.
The answer is to not put yourself into such a bad place that you can't handle expansionary fiscal policy in the first place (greece, italy,) instead of avoiding it entirely.
That image of David Cameron calling for austerity in front of a bunch of gold crap still makes me laugh
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/112373/ac1fb05e-e601-49e0-81dc-9c978727aba3/528221c969bedd732e60db2c-750-563.jpg
"I'll take 'Phrases heard in the Bizzaro universe' for 500 Alex"
I certainly can.
The best way to live, is with your parents. Period.
You can barely afford to live like a real person that has needs other than the basics, working shitty jobs where you're most likely over qualified for.
Rents are absolute ludicrous bulshit. 450 a month for a 1br 1 bth smaller than my parent's living room? What the fuck.
Recently at a wake my mom met some people from the village she grew up in, she learned that almost everyone but the elderly had left for the states. Now it's effectively become a ghost town and it's getting even harder to make a living.
But, it was a rural village in the middle of the mountains which doesn't speak for the rest of Portugal so I can only imagine those environments are doomed to become uninhabitable from lack of ability to sustain a local economy.
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