dorsal1967

Essay · economics · September 2026 Portuguese employees in the middle of the pay scale pay social contributions on every euro they earn, VAT on most of what they spend, and an income tax whose rates climb fast at Portuguese salaries. None of this was designed to target them. It follows from where they sit: paid entirely in wages, taxed before they see the money, saving little, and earning just where the tax scale turns steep.

Essay · society · September 2026 This series has asked mostly about money and hours. But the Portuguese became much more satisfied with their lives between 2013 and 2025 while their income rose only modestly, and what still separates them from the most satisfied Europeans is only partly income. Company, health, trust and the places people live also matter. Portugal is strong on some of these and weak on others, and not all of them are out of reach of public policy.

Essay · society · September 2026 Portugal has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by two-fifths since 2005, and most of the cut came from one change: electricity from wind, water and sun instead of coal. That change is almost complete. What remains is cars and lorries, cattle and landfills, cement and old houses, where emissions have hardly moved, the price of carbon has been softened, and a much faster fall has never been achieved anywhere.

Essay · society · September 2026 The number of Portuguese aged 80 and over will double in the next thirty-five years. They live long, but with fewer years of good health than almost anyone else in Europe. Most of their care is given by families, mostly by women, and by care homes that families largely pay for; public spending is under a third of the European average. The daughters who did the caring are now at work.

Conclusions · economics · September 2026 Twenty-nine essays on work, time and money, most of them about Portugal, reduced to what they found. A century of productivity went mostly into income, not time; Portugal’s core problem is an hour of work that stopped becoming more productive; the heaviest bill on the young is the price of a home; growth is an arrangement rather than a law; and more free time, less pressure on the planet and more satisfied people are compatible, on conditions that Portugal does not yet meet.

Essay · economics · September 2026 This series set out to ask, as fairly as it could, whether an economy and its institutions could give people more free time, put less pressure on the planet and leave them more satisfied. The answer from the evidence is a qualified yes, with the qualifications doing most of the work. Shorter hours raise satisfaction a little and cut emissions a little; the climate depends far more on how energy is made; and all three goals are easiest when productivity is growing, which in Portugal it has hardly been.

Essay · economics · September 2026 Productivity counts what people pay for, not whether it is worth having. Some of what rich economies produce is plainly wasted: food thrown away, treatment that does not help, products replaced before they wear out, finance that grows faster than it serves. Much of their borrowing has gone into houses rather than things that produce. None of this needs a planned economy to fix. It needs prices that tell the truth, rights for buyers, and rules that stop credit from favouring the wrong things.

Essay · economics · September 2026 If jobs, debts, pensions and politics depend on growth, what would it take to loosen each dependence? There are real policies for all four, some already tried: shorter hours and short-time work, fiscal rules and surpluses, pensions that adjust themselves, taxes on wealth rather than work. Each has evidence behind it and a cost attached. None removes the need to choose who bears the adjustment; growth is what has spared rich countries that choice.

Essay · society · September 2026 The Portuguese say a family should have between two and three children, and want about two for themselves. They expect to have 1.7, and the country’s fertility rate is 1.4. Half of women in their forties had fewer children than they wanted. Asked why, most say it was their own choice; many also name money, work and housing. The evidence from abroad says policy can help at the margin, and that who does the work at home may matter as much as money.