Latin American economies are particularly interesting due to the implementation of structural pension reforms (starting in 1981 in Chile, and followed in the mid-1990s in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru among others), which legally changed the nature of social security contributions from being a tax to a deferred salary.
Workers continued to protest the structural pension reforms in demonstrations across Greece on Tuesday.
It includes another €11.5 billion of spending cuts, along with unpopular structural measures: pensions will shrink again and thousands of public-sector workers will become sackable.IMF officials have warned that if the reform timetable slips, Greece will not receive its next round of funding.
There is no structural impediment to pension reform, and no initiative has forced legislators to issue all that pension debt.
The Windy City also has a structural deficit, unmanageable pension obligations and poor credit-worthiness.
In German eyes, the purpose would be to promote sound fiscal policy and press laggards to make structural changes to pension systems and labor markets to make their economies competitive.
The government this month offered cheap credit to producers of shoes, textiles and furniture who are struggling in the face of Chinese competition.Mr Skaf and others argue that the real's strength underlines the case for structural reforms of taxes, pension, labour laws and infrastructure in order to cut the cost of doing business.
Based on current trends, the answer is clearly no, not without significant structural changes — in pensions, in taxes, in social benefits, in work rules and in expectations.
A long slump risks catastrophe.The best hope now is to stoke competitiveness by improving infrastructure and education, and continuing with structural reforms of pensions, the labour market and so on.
This will require a strong political will to push through necessary structural reforms (taxes, pensions, labour laws and infrastructure) and diminish the heavy regulatory burden that weighs on business activities, especially cumbersome to start-ups and discouraging entrepreneurship.
"Casinos are not a solution to pension and structural budget deficits and the workmen's comp problem".
