| You could say the same about <countryname> where <countryname> is a popular tourist destination that has over 15% of it's economy based in tourism.
Czechs were the minority property owners in Prague some 20 years ago, already. Inflation is occurring at higher rates in some countries than others (cough Estonia, Turkey for example) and Portugal is not exceptional in this respect.
The starting salaries for doctors in the Portuguese SNS are terrible, at around 1800 euro for doctors and 1200 euro for nurses. This is insufficient for living in Lisbon or Porto, as the author would agree. Source: I am Portuguese. I live in central Portugal. I do not like the authors apparent intentions in trying to incite anti-foreigner sentiments. Portugal has chosen it's own course here, from the Golden Visas to the over-reliance on tourism. Lisbon has it's own management problems that I won't dig into, but suffice it to say that certain places like Lisbon or Porto have become rather expensive, while the majority of the interior of the country continues to be less-inhabited. Our train services were gutted when the public system was privatized and the concession given to a single company. Monopolies run rampant in Portugal. Uniquely complaining about PORTUGAL being unaffordable for the PORTUGUESE is such a Portuguese mentality, I can't even.
The author needs to live abroad in some other countries for awhile and see how much this is a general issue relating to so-called NICE CITIES becoming horribly expensive.
No doubt, we will stop being fashionable at some point, when the "next" cool place becomes king, so the real question is whether we will begin manufacturing and developing other sectors of our economy beyond raw-materials export (low in the capitalist pyramid) and tourism. Make furniture to sell, rather than exporting the timber, so to speak. |
I love this complaint. It's so perfectly a demonstrations of itself. It's somehow as if, suffering a problem that someone else suffers from, means you're not allowed to even discuss it. It's also hardly unique to Portugal. Most countries discuss domestic politics in terms of the country, because they have say over the policy of non-domestic territories. (Usually - colonial empires excepted.)