It would be very surprising if you believe labor protections are the root cause of Portugal's economic woes. Can you share how you drew that conclusion?
From the introduction:
> For many years, a key distinguishing feature of the Portuguese labour market has been its persistently high employment and relatively low unemployment, despite the high level of employment protection ... The crisis has now seemingly brought about an end to this striking feature of the Portuguese labour market: ... As a result, Portugal now [in 2017] has the third highest unemployment rate among OECD countries; ...
And the findings:
> The results show that the sharp outward shift in the Portuguese Beveridge curve was to a large extent driven by cyclical factors. However, it was compounded by some structural factors, namely, the relatively high level of employment protection together with the relatively high minimum wage ratio and the relatively generous unemployment benefit system.
I'm under the impression that even before the financial crisis, Portugal was considered one of the "poorer" European economies, which is what I was getting at. But I see now the comment I was responding to may have been concerned with Portugal's _recovery_ since 2008.
Basically anything that hurts the top 0.1% is presented as bad for the economy. Which probably has a lot to do with how the economy is measured.
Its a real problem!
It's telling that America just gets richer and more powerful and Europe stagnates more and more.
Reap what you sow europoors. America shows you the power of the Protestant work ethic.