polaris_mars

Oh my god!!! Sorry to react like this... Other people already commented that... That is sooooo much disconnected from reality it shows you never went to a factory floor. You never seen anything being produced in mass scale. Even the poster wall robot arms doing welding work need hundreds of people taking care of their set up, maintenance and much more. And those are complex machines. Even simpler machines such as steel presses that take in steel rolls and make steal parts of all shapes and sizes (e.g. car breaks, fridge doors, anything with steel actually) take a huge amount of set up work, management and maintenance. In Germany (which I know well) you see plenty of kids (18yos) in factories learning all these detaild skills from older workers. Takes them some years to become good and they are very sought after. Companies do worry if can get good high school kids to take their aprentiships. This has ZERO to do with higher math or bachelor's degree engeneiring education.

Exactly. I would add that the spirit of system is realising that people have different abilities and training them accordingly to their potential, and there is nothing wrong with that. Realschule and Hauptschule are not there to try to get everyone back into gymnasium track. The merits of Realschule and Hauptschule are well established in society since they are the pipeline of people that end up in practical and technical jobs e.g. doing machine maintenance in factories and so on.

Some snark: it is mostly intelectuals that dread at the thought and possible implication that not all people are meant to get an university degree.To achieve that goal they are willing to degrade all standards so that anyone can have a pretty paper in wooden frame.

It is so ironic that you mention Germany,where kids are split (at age 10, 12?) into hauptschule (lower ability), realschule (medium ability), and gymnasium (higher ability).

To think ramanujans of this world would benefit from lower standards is also having no idea or never knowing one in real life.

Considering only the money aspect it can be worthwhile.

The problem that I have seen with people trying to take advantage of lower taxes for expats is that you can't easily find jobs that pay well. So even with lower taxes your net salary is not as high if are coming from an northern European coutry or US.

It is not so much about hard libertarianism than practical libertarianism. All these protections look good on paper but they will only set Portugal back at this stage. One more Kafkaesque rule and regulation to keep track of. It only sounds like a innocent simple rule, but add it to all the existing ones. Everytime you talk with a Portuguese company owner, the first 40min of any discussion is him explaining why such and such can't be done because of law xyz and taxes here and there for things that would make total sense in another country but are just not worth it trying to do them in Portugal. More than once I had the reaction "oh my friend, here is not so simple, I wish, I know, we are screwed" and the thing is the people I talk to are as smart as anyone outside the country, but the amount of CPU time just devoted to navigate all the made complexity is just completely crazy. 14 monthly salaries, worker food subsidy, travel subsidy, now special payment for internet and electricity, plus Sweden level taxes etc etc etc.

The topic of receiving boss messages out of work hours was no hot topic at all in Portugal. Only on the minds of politicians who are more attuned to the concerns of managerial classes in Brussels than in Portugal.

Elections are coming in 2022, one more reason for them to fire more populist laws like one.

One more measure to keep Portugal the eternal cheap beach destination serving wealthy foreigners (read average working class from Germany or Holland) in holiday resorts and restaurants in our lovely sunny cities.

Search premature imitation.

Yes. Once your country catches with the rest of developed world then yes you can have slack to have nice things such as all those minimum standards you mentioned. But with this Portugal will remain a back water coutry forever. I have friends that were telling me 10 years ago that Portugal will be the California of Europe. Nice weather welcoming culture, education going up. Who would not want to set up office there?? Nop, I told them. Portugal is the Mexico of Europe. You get taxed to death and anyone without connections but with ability just emigrantes.

Why don't you go to Bangladesh and ask them to set minimum wage laws and maximum working hours? It would help Portugal more than this law, but not so sure about Bangladesh...

I'm Portuguese btw and know very well what I'm talking about. Just crossing the border to Spain makes big difference in a young guy's prospects in life.

In Portugal is the state that micro manages you and your company.

This is a feature not a bug. What I'm hearing is, it takes the energy necessary to drive 1.8m kilometres to forge one bitcoin. Perfect.

And humanity is not on the verge of climate extinction, although it is the dogma of our times.