ALBUFEIRA

Wake Up From your Slumber

Portugal’s agony is only getting started

October 16, 2012

(Submitted by Heydrich)

The Portuguese politicians’ budget for 2013 will radically worsen the country’s depression. The media calls this the “road to prosperity.”

Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar confirmed that with his 2013 budget, the average income tax will increase from 9.8% in 2012 to 13.2% in 2013, equal a month's wages for many workers. On top of this, Mr. Gaspar will nail everyone with an additional 4 percent tax that he calls a “surcharge.”

Meanwhile he will reduce the amount of money in circulation by 2.7 billion euros, and will fire another 12,000 public sector employees.

Among the public employees that still have jobs, their retirement age will be raised to 65. Their overtime and sick-leave pay will be cut. Temporary work contracts will be slashed. Payments for pensions, unemployment, and sickness will be reduced or eliminated.

In May 2011 the Troika created 78 billion euros out of thin air, and gave it to Portuguese bankers and politicians, who pocketed the loot while dumping the debt (plus the compounding interest) on the Portuguese masses. This ruinous theft is called “fiscal soundness.” Anyone who questions it is called a “militant.”

As a result, Portugal’s economy is forecast to contract for a third straight year in 2013, meaning the depression has doubled, doubled again, and will double again.

Mr Gaspar said his 2013 budget would allow Portugal to reduce its budget deficit to 4.5%. Supposedly he must reduce Portugal’s budget deficit below the European Union target of 3% of GDP. This will not happen, of course, so Portugal will continue to be destroyed by the debt-and-austerity cycle. Politicians will continue to pocket loot from the Troika, and continue to make the masses pay for it via ever-harsher austerity.

As in Spain and Greece, Portugal has had ever-larger street protests against this ever-harsher austerity. Opposition Socialist Party leader António José Seguro described Mr. Gaspar’s budget as "a fiscal atomic bomb.” The General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, the largest union group with some 600,000 members, will hold a general strike against austerity on Nov. 14.

Mr Gaspar’s tax increases will be particularly hard on Portugal's middle class. Someone earning €41,000 ($53,000) a year, for example, will pay almost half his income (45 percent) to the bankers, compared with 35.5 percent now. Someone earning €7,000-€20,000 per year will pay nearly a third of his income (28.5 percent) to the bankers.

Companies making annual profits over €7.5 million will pay an extra tax of 5 percent on top of their 25 percent corporate tax.

Because of the tyranny of bankers and their puppet politicians, Portugal has one of the highest (if not the highest) rate of emigration in Europe. The YouTube video below shows that many communities in Portugal are now abandoned ghost towns. Some citizens hope that rich people will buy the ghost towns and transform them into spots for rich tourists, so at least the local peasants can have jobs cleaning toilets for their betters.

The video also shows that queues outside African and South American consulates in Lisbon get longer each day. (Soon we will see protests not against immigrants from the Third World, but against immigrants from Europe.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP-MZzkhkVE

Portugal has traditionally exported some of its manpower, but in the past it was blue-collar workers and villagers who left for a better life. Now it's the skilled and well-educated.

Because of the euro currency, and political corruption, Europe is a has-been.

(Image – google.com / Article – wakeupfromyourslumber.com)