Portugal's 1974-76 Carnation Revolution was as Tommasi di Lampedusa wrote in The Leopard, "in order for things to remain the same things will have to change." But it didn't seem that way when I was in Lisbon and travelling around Portugal in the summer of 1974. As a 19 year old American student I had no understanding of how poor Portugal was.

Feudalism is a versatile institutional transvestite. It pretends to leave while merely dressing up in new clothes as the rules of the party change. After the Carnation Revolution the oligarchy that had supported Salazar and profited from the colonial wars knew the rules of the game had changed and that they had to dress the state in new free trade and democratic clothes to open up Portugal to a growing EEC. Salazarian austerity enforced at gunpoint and PIDE torture had become economically pointless.

But after half a century the suit that designed as new in 1974-76 has grown old. Chega's 5% rise in voting intention polls tell you what's coming. The PS government's 20% hemorrhage in support isn't all going to the PSD, but also to the populist right. A wave of strikes with a center left government in power benefits the populist right.

I saw a stat that said Portugal's high school dropout rate dropped from 44% in 2001 to 9% now, which means the state pays for education and low salaries just export the talent the state paid to educate. Not a sustainable dev model. The wave of teacher and other strikes is a symptom of this. When people who should think of themselves as middle class professionals strike while demonstrating with signs that say "respeito", meaning they're not getting any, you know you're approaching a tipping point.

The state could raise the minimum wage by 50% and pay off the teachers and the transport workers with a 2% wealth tax inversely indexed to the Gini coefficient of inequality so the wealth tax goes up with inequality and down if unequal distribution of incomes and wealth declines. https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/how-to-stop-the-plutocracy-game-index-the-top-1-s-tax-rates-to-decreasing-inequality-a3a19f42cd97

It would remove CEOs incentive for wage suppression and bring well-educated Portuguese talent back from abroad. The quality of life here is so high compared to the US and the UK that talented Portuguese can live better on 40-60k in Porto than on 80k-120k in the US.

But passing a wealth tax that rises with increased inequality is too intelligent an idea for any politician to try and pass it.