Portugal is listed as the poorest country in Western Europe and is also considered the least educated according to the Wall Street Journal. Portugal's plan to reduce their deficit was not approved by parliament. Their credit rating was downgraded (which makes borrowing more difficult). Portugal would be the third country after Greece and Ireland to require EU help.
Does having an unskilled workforce make this situation worse than Ireland and Greece? In order to pay off debt in the future they would need long term economic growth. For most of the 20th century Portugal was a major textile producer. Now that labor has been outsourced to Asia. In the U.S. almost 90% of adults have graduated from high school. In Portugal the number is 28%!
What are some of the issues, economically speaking, of an uneducated citizenry during the highly globalized 21st century? How can Portugal reduce their debt AND improve education?
Uneducated people in Portugal are not going to have a job in order to make money to payoff their debt. That is why they're making it harder to take out loans, this way people who can't pay it back are unable to take one out. They can reduce their debt by putting restrictions on handing out loans and enstilling an education system
ReplyDeleteYes, education is essential for an economy. It will allow for an economy that produces more services, which will allow for GDP growth.
ReplyDeleteThe portugese government can take money out of circulation to make their currency worth more. They can also make laws that require citizens to complete a certain level of education.
ReplyDeletePortugal can improve their education by increasing student funding such as scholarships and loans. By having a work force that has higher education, portugal will be able to modernize their economy and reduce debt.
ReplyDeleteEducation helps to create jobs in the service sector which grows GDP. It also helps increase productivity which lowers production costs.
ReplyDeleteWith an uneducated citizenry, people with power are no more educated than college students in the U.S. Portugal may be able to reduce their debt and improve education by making it harder to drop out of high school and making it virtually impossible to obtain a job without at least a high school degree.
ReplyDeleteIn today's world, a college degree cannot even guarantee you a job. That's in the US at least, the country that was once thought of as the nation of opportunity. If it is so hard to get a job in the US even with aeducation, With 80% of Portugal uneducated, how could there even be close to economic growth. Portgugal needs to start putting more concentration into their education, this will at least help there work force and get more people jobs and jump start there economy. They should build more schools and invest into hiring the best of the best to teach there youth, in turn this will provide intelligence to fix there economy and fix their debt as well. As far as the debt goes, if the US and Japan can't get there's done, we cant expect Portugal too either. Just play that one by ear i guess...
ReplyDeleteWell, you can force the students to go to school by having a harsh penalty if you don't. They need an educated work force because in this generation the only way to advance an economy is with an educated work force!
ReplyDeleteI find it strange that Portugal's dropout rate is so high while Greece's and Ireland's are so low, yet all three nations are bringing the EU down and are greatly struggling. I think there is a direct correlation between education and economics. Portugal needs to improve its education programs first and then focus on economics.
ReplyDeleteSome issues I think of uneducated citizens is that they do not have minimum wage for citizens to purchases what they need to make their education better. Portugal can reduce it's debt by increasing taxes and putting the tax money towards education and debt.
ReplyDeleteIf the education does not improve in Portugal, they will not be able to produce many skilled workers and their nation will not develope. In order to reduce the debt, they must somehow improve education so that their economy may grow.
ReplyDeleteThey can reduce debt by getting jobs and paying everything off. In order to get jobs, the people need to get an education. In my opinion, they should not randomly be giving out loans. By doing this, they're giving away money that they may not need to.
ReplyDeleteAn uneducated working class creates an imbalance in wealth, creating a larger percentage of poor people. Because of improved communication and interaction between nations, Portugal can outsource jobs to other countries, increasing unemployment. This makes the demand for jobs even greater and decreases the wages of the working class. Portugal can reduce their debt by increasing production and trade and increase spending on education.
ReplyDeleteWhen you gave a country that is uneducated, they will start to fall behind other countries economically because the citizens don't have the tools to produce and innovate like other countries. In order to bring up education, there needs to be a will among citizens. The education problem has to be a mix of citizen will and the countries government. I think adding more teachers and schools with incentives will work. This can improve economic growth as well as the education system. Put an incentive to graduate high school.
ReplyDeleteThe work force keeps changing and you need to know how to change with it. You need to have a skill that you learned. In order for you to do that you need education. Since the 21st century is more globalized we would rather have more people working that have the education to do the job. For Portugal not having a educated work force you can't really get any where because they don't have the skills, that are brought on by education.
ReplyDeleteI think having an unskilled workforce does make their situation worse than Greece and Ireland. I'm not sure if its because in america the higher education you receive the more you get paid and higher level job you get that makes me think this but education still seems important to the workforce.
ReplyDeleteUneducated citizenry seems to me like instead of progressing you're regressing. Meaning, instead of learning to work you're just going through the motions of everyday life, unconcerned by the economy, and just trying to get by.
Having a good education is a great way to qualify for a job or to create jobs and this helps the economy grow
ReplyDeleteSeeing as a majority of developed countries have an educated workforce, not having an educated workforce seems like a problem. They are less productive and are almost unprepared to do what needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteWith a well-educated economy, Portugal would have more skilled workers and a smarter economy overall, resulting in better decision-making skills and a more productive economy as a whole. This would also help to reduce their debt.
ReplyDeleteUneducated citizens vote significantly less than educated citizens. Therefore, the uneducated are relativly unaware of what is going on in politics and economics. Portugal can't just make cuts because that would decrease education. It would be better to try to stabilize the economy because that would evntually increase education.
ReplyDeleteThey need to keep people in school because they will have no economic knowledge. After getting an education it is easier to het a successful high paying job which will help the unemployment rate. There needs to be a law to finish high school which will help them recover faster
ReplyDeleteIn society, uneducated people are not going to know how to work certain jobs. Educational people will know how to work these jobs and how to better improve the work productivity. To improve education, they can allow for loans and scholarships.
ReplyDeleteWithout education GDP will cntinue to decrease. In order to increase Education the country should have subsidies for people getting educated or heavily reduce cost of education.
ReplyDeleteEducation is very important for an economy. An educated workforce is more productive and can lead to more technological advances. All of this helps increase the GDP. Portugal will continue to have low growth if they do not reform their educational system.
ReplyDeleteWith n uneducated population, Portugal can't compete in the global economy because they wouldn't be able to produce or develop new and advanced technology. They will be stuck producing textiles unless they have an influx of educated citizens. They can fix this by putting more money into education which will eventually lead to an educated population with which they can improve their economic situation
ReplyDeleteEducation needs to be more accessible to the people in portugal. Scholarships and loans need to be offered more to make people want to go to college and get a degree. With more people going to college, they can make more more money which would increase their standards of living
ReplyDeleteEducation is definitely necessary for economic growth because more education helps increase the amount of services available increasing the amount of the jobs and economic growth
ReplyDeleteThe low education levels of the Portuguese will result in huge increases in structural unemployment in the future, as the advanced positions available will not be within the skill levels of the future job seekers. Portugal must find a way to encourage and increase their graduation rates for both high school and college.
ReplyDeleteHaving an unskilled work force makes it harder for Portugal bc no one will want to hire people. They need to increase their spending for education so that the econo y can grown the future.
ReplyDeleteAn uneducated citizenry generally means that the workers in portugal are less skilled, which worsens the economy. To make the deficit smaller, portugal needs to figure out its issues with its school system. Since people respond to incentives, Portugal should give students an incentive to finish high school. That should reduce dropouts.
ReplyDeleteUnskilled workforce could easily be replaced by a machines to increase education the government should subsidize it. They should have a law that forces children to b in school until a certain age. And maybe some benefits for graduating.
ReplyDeleteWith the textile market moving to even cheaper labor in the far east and the uneducated labor inortugal too expensive, the nation will need to create new initiatives to educate its people so they can get skilled work and foster long term economic growth. They need to reduce there debt this way bc the globalized economy makes their unskilled uneducated labor obsolete and a fundamental problem that needs to be adressed before Portugal can have economic growth.
ReplyDeleteIf currency is taken out of circulation causing the money to be more worthy which would help them be able to pay off debts and have money for other things. Without an education there are unqualified people working these jobs, in turn this causes those businesses to do poorly and go out of business. This would lower the money they make on collecting taxes because people lose there jobs and cannot pay and the taxes from the business are gone.
ReplyDeleteAn uneducated society is an inefficient society. Without the extra knowledge from graduating, all of those people are operating inefficiently. With such a low productivity, aggregate supply is greatly decreased and the country's economy suffer. If you look at America and how much less uneducated people are paid, you can imagine how little those people in Portugal are being paid, which means the economy is really being hurt.
ReplyDeleteEducation is key to a a good economy. If there are no educated people, there are no good jobs to be had in the first place and no producers or products and without producers there are no wages which means no economy. Unhealthy!!!
ReplyDeleteWith a less educated population, Portugal will continue to be the poorest country because no one wants to hire or employ someone with no skills. To improve the GDP, Portugal needs to enforce education if people a not willing to finish until graduation.
ReplyDeleteThe people need an incentive to want to be educated because bettering education can improve jobs and lead to new innovations and ideas which will create more jobs and better the economy and promote economic growth and improve GDP
ReplyDeleteUneducated members of society generally equal an unstable or deprived economy. The government of Portugal can provide increased wages to people that finished their high school career and provide a greater amount to people with a college education. This will create a more stable economy, and possibly, decrease their deficit.
ReplyDeleteIn the 21st century today, high education is almost a necessity when it comes to finding an efficient job. The competition of finding a job in today's market is increasing more and more as unemployment rates are increasing. Therefore, companies are searching for the most qualified citizens to carry out specific jobs and those with less education are being overlooked because of their lack of skills and degrees. Also, because Portugal has a low rate of high school graduates, their economy can only support low paying, and less effective jobs because of their lack of skills. In order to reduce their debt and improve education, the government should increase spending on schools and teachers to improve education,
ReplyDeleteIn today's economy, a bachellor degree isn't even enough to suffice. So if their population doesn't even graduate high school how are they supposed to compete in such a competitive market?
ReplyDeleteThe lack of education will hurt Portugal because they will not be able to keep up with the growing developments of the other nations educational advances. We are being pushed to even go to grad school so the fact that they dont even finish high school puts them farther behind us. The reason they are not doing well is because the citizens are not productive enough to keep the economy growing.
ReplyDeletePortugal wont be able to compete in the future because they have few skilled workers, and markets keep becoming more and more advanced and specialized. They need to reduce debt by cutting discretionary spending MASSIVELY and then they need to increase educational funding to have a future. This would reduce debt and Portugal needs to do that to have a future. Otherwise they would have to leech off the EU for the long haul. The cuts will be hard to make but they will have to find a way to do it.
ReplyDeleteSo basically this Portugal country has got to get with the program and create govt programs encouraging academic growth and induce incentives that will allow a greater amount of udergrads to succeed, I think if Portugal doesn't clean up it's act in the near future, the EU should just boot them.
ReplyDeleteAn economy that wants to produce more services needs education. Then through the production of services the GDP would grow, bettering their economy.
ReplyDeleteI think the lack of education makes te problem in Portugal a lot worse. If the people are uneducated, they can only work a select number of jobs. In today's economy, it's almost essential to have a bachelors degree if not something higher, so if people in Portugal aren't even graduating from high school, it is going to cause them even more problems in finding and keeping a steady job
ReplyDeletePortugal can still create jobs, such as construction work, that unskilled workers can do. This will help stimulate the economy. However, Portugal must change their education laws in the long term so that recessions in the future won't require major readjustment.
ReplyDeleteHaving an uneducated population will make reducing their deficit more difficult because they will not have many citizens that have a strong enough background to come up with ideas of what is the best way to fix their economy. A way to create a more stable economy and to improve education would be to have projects started to build more public schools. The additional demand for unskilled laborers to build the schools would increase consumers ability to spend and the construction of the schools would provide facilities to educate the youth of their country.
ReplyDeleteI think that to have economic growth education is not needed the on,ly thing that the people of Portugal would have to accepts to have the same standard of living as china then they could still produce textiles at a Cheap price so that all their manufacturing would stay in their country, this would mean accepting a really low wage and standard of living, so it is possible . education but it will make Portugal a lot poorer
ReplyDeleteWith an uneducated workforce, Portugal won't survive. Necessary jobs can't be filled because nobody has the education necessary. If barely anyone graduates high school, the only jobs they can get must be blue collar jobs. The economy won't do well at all. To reduce their debt, Portugal needs to spend what they have on education and then borrow money and put that towards education. If they succeed and dropout rates fall, jobs will be created and more people will have money. Spending will increase, as will GDP, and the economy can stabilize itself and pay back debt.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the education system of Portugal isnt up to standards, so is might be the fault of the government that their economy is doing so bad. Without a high school diploma, people of Portugal will not be able to help the economy, until their is a higher standard of education including a college level degree. With out one the economy will be unstable, and they will continue to outsource jobs to asia.
ReplyDeletePortugal can increase incentive to further higher education by providing loans and scholarships. A modernized and high educated workforces promotes more innovative and entrepreneurial opportunities and allows portugal to compete in the global economy
ReplyDeletePortugal is in a tough spot, without the knowledge to advance the economy to work in this time they will fall behind even more. Obama talked about a race against the world to make the new and best items in the world. That starts with educated citizens who can understand the things that need to be done. With portugals economy declining affordable schooling is looking less likely and could continue to get worse unless they are helped from an outside source such as the E.U.
ReplyDeleteAll of the unskilled workers in Portugal that dropped out of high school are useless in Portugal, because the jobs that use unskilled workers we outsourced and money is paid to foreign workers. These unskilled workers remain unemployed in Portugal, hurting the country's economy because they don't have any money to spend, and production is low in the country overall. Education is essential to having a strong and prosperous economy.
ReplyDeleteFor the current world market, to be a developed country, one must provide services over labor and goods. And to be able to do that, education and training is needed. Portugal is in between. They are not educated enough to provide quality mass services and their their labor is not cheap enough to compete with China so their only outcome is failure.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem with this is that these people don't have the education qualifications necessary to get the jobs that would let them pay back their loans. To compensate for this the banks are going to have to be very selective in who their offer loans out to, in order to make sure they don't further increase their debt.
ReplyDeleteSome of the issues of an uneducated citizenry is that the country is not competitive in the global economy because it doesn't have many new ideas, technologies, or innovations that will improve the way of modern-day life. As for Portugal specifically, the overall education definitely needs to be at a higher level, and the government should provide incentives and benefits for high schoolers to graduate, and then continue on to college. A higher level of education will no doubt decrease their debt, and will result in the creation of more jobs. The government should also make it easier for it's citizens to pay off the debt which they'll acquire from taking more classes.
ReplyDeleteLow education does two negative things, first off it lowers the productivity of the nation's workers keeping the aggergrate supply curve to the left decreasing production and higher inflation. Second off it limits the jobs avaiable, without training the portugese can only fill so many lower paying jobs. The low payment decreases the aggregate demand, as the people can only buy so much. In order to increase the GDP and education they should have more government spending on education, which increases aggregate demand and increases education however they should be concerned as to how much they increase it as they may increase inflation too much.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of education, the first step I see would be to offer government incentives such as tax breaks to families depending on how many children are enrolled. That way the tax savvy families will have a higher MB for staying in school longer, and the demand for high school level education will increase. This won't help the debt initially but given time the more educated society will be able to perform higher end jobs then they were previously doing. The end result will be improved high school graduation and improved long term economic stability.
ReplyDeleteNot having an educated country messed not having skilled workers. If a country can't depend on itself for progress then it can't become better. In order to make itself better the country should concentrate on getting it's people through school and the government should pay for it. As for the deficit I don't think the government can soy for education and lower it's debt. The deficit would have to be dealt with after the country Is stable
ReplyDeleteIf Portugal doesn't improve its nation's education, it will only widen the gap between it and other, more developed nations. It needs to find a way to keep up with the world's economy.
ReplyDeleteIf people wont be getting education , they wont be able to help their government and the economy grow in the future. Population will be unskilled, and nobody will be able to take over the jobs ( and govt jobs) . So Portuguese government should cut and save money on something else, like maybe military spendings ( in the U.S. Its the biggest part, i dont know about Portugal), or something else.
ReplyDeleteI think that yes, having an unskilled workforce makes their situation worse than that of Italy and Greece. The difficulty of an uneducated citizenry during the 21st century is that there is increased competition for the very limited array of goods an uneducated workforce can produce thanks to the vast globalization. They must either increase efficiency or be willing to work for less pay to compete with countries like Laos, Bangladesh, and Thailand. I think the best way for Portugal to fix their problems is to decrease taxes now, subsidize higher education and improve the schooling system to produce a more skilled labor force. Then, once this is achieved and the country has a large debt, phase out the subsidies, government aids, and increase taxes slowly to help pay off the debt, under the assumption people will accept the gradual loss of assistance and still expect their children to do better than them and go to college like they did.
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