The issue is salaries in Portugal are VERY VERY low - they are comparable to Poland, Romania, and Greece - yet their tax burden and cost of living is comparable to Denmark.
A 25 year old Portuguese college graduate can immigrate visa free to Denmark and double-to-triple their salary almost overnight.
The same can't be said for a Dane unless they immigrate to the US, but they're in the H1B queue like everyone else so it just isn't worth the hassle unless it's a high paying white collar job.
The EEC has a massive disparity in incomes, with average monthly wages ranging from €700 to €5,000 depending on the country, and as EEC members tend to have fairly simplified immigration policies between each other, this causes a brain drain in the countries with lower wages.
The issue is Portugal is very business unfriendly and human capital is weak.
It's hard to make the case to invest in Portugal when you can invest a similar amount in neighboring Spain and get a much better return.
Nor do local businesses earn enough to pay comparable to higher income countries in the Single Market - especially because Portugal essentially penalizes large employers
This means the only way to make up the salary differnce that is the cause of the brain drain is to decrease taxes for early career Portuguese.
Denmark and Portugal are nowhere near the same level of development, and what works for Denmark does not work for Portugal.
Exactly. So I would focus on improving that, rather than try a quick and desperate trick of tax cuts. Why not collect the taxes and then invest them wisely in great modernised services, for example?
Easing hiring means pissing off unions, which means you piss off voters and donors.
Simplifying entry of foreign businesses and competitors means pissing off small and medium businesses, which means you piss off voters and donors.
Shrinking Portugal's notorious bloated public sector will save money, but means firing a significant number of Portuguese, which means you piss off voters.
Shrinking Portugal's notoriously large spending on social programs will save money, but means you piss off voters.
You can't just "modernize services" overnight. It requires a generation, a lot of capital, and strategy to invest in building a High Tech industry.
> Why not collect the taxes and then invest them wisely in great modernised services, for example?
Because Portugal has had an elevated debt-to-GDP ratio for almost 20 years now, which makes it extremely difficult to get the capital to do any of the above, which means a significant amount of Portugal's tax revenue is spent on servicing those debts.
The average Portuguese gets paid too little, the average Portuguese business is too small to generate significant business taxes, and every individual Portuguese person who has hireable skills has no incentive to be paid a fraction of what they would earn in London, Frankfurt, or Madrid.
Lowering taxes for early career Portuguese in order to entice them to stay until they become mid-career is the least bad option of the multiple bad options Portugal has.
So the move of bringing people and capital by available means (tax breaks) and be less hostile to startups & companies (they have been very hostile and bureaucratic historically) is one of the few things they can do, and it works.
For example, in Hungary, a lot of Orban's political consolidation was itself due lagging economic growth in the aftermath of the GFC and Eurozone crisis, as well as FDI moving towards cheaper Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia.
Hungary's HDI and GDP growth began stagnating around 2014-15, which was around the time mass dissatisfaction against Orban arose.
It's been 10 years, and he's still in power, so I guess the Hungarian people aren't that dissatisfied with him.
Gerrymandering, control of all Hungarian language media in a country where most people are monolingual in a unique language, and selective judicial prosecution are the main things keeping Orban afloat.
Thailand comes to mind, but its only "fun and comfortable" if you're an economic maximiser, bringing western money in. For locals, it is not fun or comfortable.
Denmark pays the highest wages in the EU [0], so you can't consider there.
[0] - https://nordicbusiness.media/denmark-pays-the-highest-wage-i...
I think Portugal is fun, comfortable and safe. It is a fantastic place if you want to visit.
Living there can be an issue. One of the problems, as another comment says, is that salaries are really low. That's probably compounded by the amount of bureaucracy one needs to wade through to do anything, and the overall 'old school' thinking of folks.
Generalizing(perhaps unfairly), the Portuguese seem to look fondly at the rear view mirror, but more progressive ideas are not viewed in the same light.
You would probably see more people staying if they had a space for their ideas, and a living wage.
That does not sound like the description of a "fun" or "comfortable" country to live in. :-(
A cool policy would be every newcomer has to construct (or cause to be constructed) at least one housing unit. If that was a condition of the golden visa everyone would do it and the benefits would be in injecting significant additional supply into the local rental and real estate market preventing supply and demand from raising housing costs.
Yeah, apart from the pickpockets in Lisboa. They are really the most brazen I have ever seen anywhere. They don't seem dangerous, but constantly having someone trying to pick a wallet from your bag is pretty annoying.