News of the Year
Since 1986, Portugal has embraced a Mixed Economic System. Most European countries have. The historic base of this system is capitalism in one form or another. In any capitalism variant I can think of, the distribution of capital is in the hand of private economic actors.
In Portugal the distribution of capital is predominantly dependent of an oligarch group composed not as in the historical/optimist oligarchies by the best and the brightest but the ones who have any capital to distribute. It’s a small group indeed. Mind you, some persons in this group have my total admiration, because indeed they distribute and contribute a lot for the community. In fact, the country has a huge debt towards those people. They are the few who we have to thank for so many good things about this country. But it’s not the case of many.
It’s hard to make some people understand that the system is based on exploration of resources, mass production and mass consumption (and mass waste, by the way). If you create rules that make it harder for capital to circulate outside the oligarchy you end up with this result:
1,7 milhões ganham menos de 600 euros
“1,7 millions earn less than 600 euros / Net earnings of almost half the contracted workers doesn’t even reach this value and 151 thousand even earn less than 310 euros”. The average wage in Portugal is now 737 euros!!!!! The major Portuguese telecom is offering 300 euros (net) per month (4 hours per day) for helpdesk in networking and ADSL dial-up problems!!!!!!
Please, do comment this post!
Could you please give an example of “persons in this group have my total admiration, because indeed they distribute and contribute a lot for the community”? A specific example of people who we are supposed to be thankful in the “group of oligarchies composed not by the brightest” but by the long-time capitalist families, which are at power in Portugal over and over again – if not directly in government, then using it as a puppet. Really, it is not a provocation, it’s just that I would like to be informed… ;-)
nat
Tuesday, 9 September 2008 at 13:23:07
Here it is a list of names of people who contributed to the development of the country and – in many cases – to the social condition of the Portuguese workers:
Alfredo da Silva;
António Champalimaud;
Calouste Gulbenkian;
Belmiro de Azevedo;
António Pinheiro;
Rui Nabeiro;
Luís Simões.
I know there are a lot more. Those are the few names that pop into my mind in a flash.
I’m not saying those persons were or are perfect or that they are role models, or that I agree with their ideals. It’s not about that. I don’t know them personally (except one or two of them). It’s about contributing to improve the community in one way or another, wether on purpose or not, wether when alive or not. I feel glad they did/do, that’s all.
adlocutio
Thursday, 11 September 2008 at 18:57:01