Contemporary Love

"To be continued" I said in my last post. Well, I could be here speaking on and on about the bad things I observe in this country every day. What does this have to do with love? Everything. What Portugal lacks is solid self esteem (the base of universal, collective or individual love). Let's continue to speak about the collective. Let's start with this sentence: What Portugal really needs is to change its mentality.

In the last post I never offered a solution to the minimum wage problem here, I was more concerned about things as they are, at least my perspective of how they are. Today I want to present one very basic solution. To make life bearable in this country we need to take one of three roads: lower retail prices; increase wages; or, why not, achieve a liveable harmony between them, lowering the prices and raising the minimum wage until the two reach a healthy balance.

Our minimum wage is unbearable. We need a law to change it. But more than laws, we need intelligent people. We need intelligent governments that are not subordinated to big companies, and we need big companies that follow the law and want to grow without exploiting people. How many centuries will Portugal take to imitate good examples? Again, what we need is a change of mentality.

Example: I had an opportunity to appreciate how America works. Very generally speaking, American people work hard and well, but American people are also very well paid. America is a country that promotes intelligence and creativity. And here are the basic differences. Portugal has companies that don't follow laws and governments (whatever their political color) that are subordinated to those companies. What further complicates the problem is the fact that Portuguese corporate culture is still largely based on the "buddy system" where we see big companies in this country hiring and promoting people whose highest work skill is making friends with or being related to the bosses.

From an economic point of view, Portugal is a recipe for disaster and the victims of the disaster aren't our large corporations.

Let's face it. Someone's making money here. The math is simple: in a situation where retail prices are high and the cost of labor is low, somebody's making good money. And it's not the labor.

What do we need to achieve a situation in which workers earn a minimum wage high enough to be a true living wage?

What do we need to achieve an economic recovery?

Sacrifice.

Who always sacrifices more? Consumers. Well, I prefer to call them workers. But what more do they have to sacrifice?

Economic recovery requires that companies sacrifice. They must lower the prices of their goods, raise salaries or, as I said above, strike a balance between those two alternatives. Left alone, it's not something that's likely to happen. To do so would mean less corporate revenue, at least in the short term, and corporate managers keep their jobs by producing more short term revenue for investors, not less. Don't expect the large corporations that are benefitting from this cost of living -- minimum wage discrepancy to fix it.

Can we expect the government to step in and correct the situation? Are governments that look to the big companies to sustain the national economy likely to correct the situation by asking them to sacrifice? Of course not.

Recovery is also and mainly up to those who are currently suffering and sacrificing from this bad economic situation. The voter. The worker.

Why is this so difficult? Because workers believe what companies and governments tell them. Workers believe the companies when the companies tell them they have no money for higher wages, although they continue to raise the prices of their goods. So we need informed workers.

And we need workers (voters) who have courage, who refuse to remain silent about the situation out of fear of losing their job. Laws that protect workers from being fired for voicing their opinions would help.

Workers (voters) also believe governments who tell them that the economic situation is too complicated to hope for a quick or easy solution. Of course it's complicated, if you want to "fix" the problem without causing the large companies any pain or suffering.

A good solution will require good laws that are strongly enforced. Those good laws won't happen until voters make it so.

Enough of basic economy (anyway I am not an expert, just an idealist). One of these days I will return to the creativity issue.

Regards,

Proverb