In early 2009, we wrote an article entitled Do Not «Disturb», which I hate to say is becoming more and more apparent as the months go by. The year 2010 – and perhaps 2011 – is going to be a brutal wake-up call for a generation that was born and raised in virtual abundance. They have known poverty only in the form of marginalisation and social exclusion affecting a minority. But there will be an ever-shrinking middle class and a growing lower class. A lower class that will have nothing to do with social exclusion or marginalisation, but will consist of familiar faces, former work colleagues and entire neighbourhoods mired in poverty.
Whilst economic stabilisation or even recovery will begin to take hold in countries such as the US, Germany and France from 2010 onwards, in Spain we will run out of breathing space. And by that I mean state capacity, as the personal savings of most middle-class people have already run dry in 2009. The hole formula Spanish is a very simple equation: without extremely high and sustained growth, the future looks bleak, unless we’re given a magic hat with a pair of ears peeking out of it. We are also the epitome of inefficiency: in the last quarter we lost a million wage earners, but in the last year we created more than 100,000 new civil servants. And we already have one civil servant for every five workers, as GurusBlog points out in this informative article.
Productivity is a concept that is alien to some short-sighted trade unions who still believe that workers’ problems are caused by employers’ excessive profits. Not this time. The fact is that some workers and trade unionists are still desperately seeking for the State to provide them with their usual dose of the blue pill in 2009. But by 2010 they will have run out in Spain and we will only have red pills. Blessed are those who got used to them beforehand, for the future will belong to them.
It may just be a coincidence, but I recently received an email – a spam message – with the following content: