Money, so they say is the root of all evil today

So as some of you might have heard on the news, Portugal's in the middle of a huge financial crisis, the unemployment rate for people under the age of 30 is 23%, and 12% for the overall population. Not to mention the fact that the Portuguese people's way of proactive let's fix this attitude is actually to stop working and protest everything that bothers them about life and essentially doesn't help anything. The Portuguese public deficit is 93% of the country's GDP. The Portuguese prime minister resigned after his budget was rejected by the EU again and the EU audited Portugal's budget. Now, the European Union is bailing out Portugal's economy for 80 billion euros(115 billion dollars).

The minimum wage in Portugal isn't done by hour, it's done by month. Since you can't work more than 40 hours a week in Portugal, this salary is for a standard full time employee with 35 hours a week. The minimum wage is 485€ per month, about $686, or $8,232 per year. Just because it's minimum wage doesn't mean it's only young students serving coffee on weekends. This is a very large part of the population that LIVES off $8,232 per year. The average salary, which is what I'd say adults in a nuclear family make, is 894€ per month, making their annual salary $15,180. But since in almost all Portuguese families, both parents work, their combined household salary for the year is $30,060 per year. These aren't even bad jobs either, these are good jobs, managers, accountants, therapists, IT, etc.

Anyway the currency in Portugal is the Euro, Portugal is in Europe, but it's actually fairly cheap when compared to other European countries which are jaw-droppingly expensive. For example I can get a Portuguese Meat Pastry and an iced tea for 1.40€($1.98) in a café, versus 10 euros($14.15) that I paid for the same thing in the German airport during my layover to Hungary. And it's even cheaper if you go to the supermarket called Continente, it's like Super Target. You can buy a two liter bottle of coke for 52¢($0.73). It's really hard to believe that people live here with such little money, because while things like food and housing are relatively cheap, other things such as elecriticity, gasoline($8 a gallon here, stop complaining about $4), trains, and water bills are a vacuum to the wallet.

The euro notes and coins are really cool looking and I think it'd be cool if American money was colorful like this.

1€(1 Euro)=100 Eurocents

We have coins for 1¢, 2¢, 5¢, 20¢, 50¢, 1€, 2€, and then notes for 5€, 10€, 20€, and 50€.  However I've never seen a 100€, 200€, or 500€ note. 

If you look at this map of GDP per capita in Europe you'll see Portugal(bottom left) having a lot less money than the rest of Western Europe(Including Spain who is Portugal's rival).

Anyway just a small post about money and Portugal's economic situation, hopefully it'll all get better soon!