Firing public employees...

SNAFU in Greece.  Status quo.  Everything is going badly as usually.  FMI has just asked Greece to cut down on public expenditure by cutting down on the public sector by firing employees and closing public companies.  Otherwise the deficit will continue - to rise.

It is just a matter of time before the same will be necessary in Portugal.  Within a short time there will be probably 20% less people working for the state.  Either directly or indirectly in public companies.

But here is the problem.  Firing public servants of a certain age will be very expensive.  First of all they have high salaries.  Secondly, they will receive comparatively high unemployment benefits.  Thirdly, they will pass on to comparatively high retirements.  Thus the cost of having them working or doing nothing is grossly the same.

This makes the economic choice easy.  The elder public employees will have to continue working until they die and the young ones will be fired.

I wonder what the young will think about that.  Oops, I forgot, the young have been expelled from their comfort zone of all of Portugal.  They have been sent into exile - or will be sent soon.  After all the young are the guilty.  They have mismanaged this country since forever...