Undecided Reader

I'm always a bit undecided. Really. Not only regarding what to read, but also what do think about what I read. In fact, I don't think this is a serious problem. Maybe too much certainty would be even worse.

Inequality

Visão gives us a portrait of inequality in Portugal. Inequality is a bad thing in itself or is it acceptable as long as we have freedom and everybody is better than before?

"Are you serious?"

Yes, "Homens da Luta" are joking — and quite serious at the same time. For once, I think we have a shot at winning the Eurovision contest. Or maybe not. Anyway, since the best we did till now was the 6th place and most people simply ignore the contest, we may well joke a bit with the whole thing.

And what better joke than sending an act from another decade to represent us?

Optimist / Pessimist

I'm an optimist regarding the idea that we can improve the world by small steps — the world is in a much better shape than 100 years ago. However, I'm worried about the stupid optimism of those convinced they can change the world in one clean sweep without understanding why the world is as it is.

If it is good for employers, it must be bad for employees

Raquel Varela gives us a neat application of class struggle theory, proving the new IMF-induced measures mean, in fact, a wage reduction. One of those measures is the reduction of social security taxes paid by employers. It's easy to understand why Raquel thinks this is the same as a wage reduction: if employers pay less taxes to fund social security, employees will have fewer social rights. It's a wage reduction, in fact.

Now, my argument may seem to come from another world, a world the author of the post would probably call petit-bourgeois. The argument is: in a country where most companies are small companies in which employers work alongside employees and earn wages as any employee, with mostly non-existent profits, this measure may help companies create jobs and — people will laugh, with their "employers are evil" mind-frame — increase wages in some cases. It may be a good thing.

Lazy Pessimism

It's easy to think everything is so rotten we don't need to make the effort to be good.

Does @ help women?

For those who love to use @ to express gender ambiguity in Portuguese: since English does this, most of the time, without using any specific symbol, do you think English is less prone to sexism than Portuguese (or any other Latin language, for that matter)?

Sexism wouldn’t disappear even if “tod@s” became the correct translation of “everyone”.  Sexism will disappear when people stop being sexist. No amount of linguistic fumbling will do that for us. And it doesn’t even help!