Pedro Nunes acusou ainda a AdC de se mover num «enquadramento político neo-liberal gravíssimo», pois «visa acabar com a regulação dos profissionais feita pelas autoridades próprias».A OM está também a ponderar pedir uma indemnização à AdC por «lesar o bom-nome da Ordem e pôr em causa os direitos dos doentes», na sequência do comunicado divulgado hoje pela autoridade da concorrência.[Via Diário Digital]
Para a AdC, a multa de 250 mil euros justifica-se uma vez que o estabelecimento de limites para o custo dos serviços prestados por médicos «impede» cada clínico de fixar preços mais competitivos, «elimina a concorrência entre profissionais pela via do preço» e «reforça os obstáculos à entrada de novos», privando também o consumidor de poder escolher «o serviço ao melhor preço».[Via Diário Digital]
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Como outras formas de remuneração variável, a gorjeta é essencialmente meritocrática. Justifica-se como forma de incentivar a excelência no empregado cujo trabalho nem sempre é observável e que é, por isso mesmo, difícil de avaliar. O costume de gratificar os empregados de um hotel é uma forma simples de promover um serviço irrepreensível, algo de crucial para a fidelização de clientes. Uma diferença sobressai: ao contrário dos bónus pagos nas empresas, as gorjetas não estão definidas. Contudo, essa relativa informalidade não significa um menor poder disciplinador.
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Enquanto prática social, a gratificação assenta num entendimento comum da regra que lhe subjaz e na existência de uma “sanção” para o seu incumprimento. Esta pode passar pela reacção desagradada do empregado ou pelo “peso na consciência” que a atitude desviante acarreta, que só existe porque há uma interiorização e uma aceitação – no sentido de entendimento, ainda que não necessariamente de cumprimento – da norma em causa. A dimensão cooperativa do hábito de gratificar é inegável: quando gratificamos, “agimos de acordo com uma máxima que gostaríamos que fosse uma lei universal” (Kant). Um exemplo de como a liberdade (neste caso, de gratificar) promove o mérito, a cooperação e o bem comum.
Numa sociedade aberta, poucas são as normas intemporais. A ideia prevalecente de que a gorjeta deve corresponder a uma percentagem do que se consome é profundamente antieconómica e injusta. O montante adequado de uma gorjeta não deve ter por base o custo da refeição, mas, sim, o custo de oportunidade do trabalho envolvido. Um empregado que tenha um ordenado fixo razoável e que receba 5 ou 10 euros de gorjeta, mesmo por uma refeição cara, receberia no final do mês mais do que o seu trabalho mereceria. Só honramos o mérito se o premiarmos adequadamente. Ser “forreta” ou “mãos largas” por princípio não é louvável. E, apesar de a gorjeta ser uma instituição importante na sociedade, não se inquiete se não gratificar um serviço medíocre: a gorjeta só é virtuosa se for uma intermitência.
Aproveito a oportunidade para agradecer o convite do João Cândido da Silva e também para recomendar o excelente texto do Luís Aguiar-Conraria, "A beleza é a verdade, a verdade a beleza", também publicado neste número.
Czech Health Minister David Rath has been in a punch-up with his right-wing rival, Miroslav Macek, during a meeting of disgruntled dentists in Prague.
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.
In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.
A decisão do governo de encerrar maternidades em pequenas cidades sem peso político não é uma decisão técnica nem pode ser justificada por razões puramente técnicos. Pelo menos para um liberal. É que tais critérios técnicos possuem pressupostos socialistas. Pressupõe-se que o dinheiro dos impostos pertencem a um bolo colectivo e que este bolo deve ser gerido de forma técnica por critérios maximizadores do bem comum. Ora, o bem comum não existe. Existem apenas interesses individuais. Qualquer decisão técnica deste tipo tem perdedores e vencedores.
That was true even in the eighteenth century, when the founder of market economics–indeed of modern economics–Adam Smith, explained how the Wealth of Nations was developed by the operation of a "hidden hand". He observed that it was "not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest". This insight, removing at a stroke the justification for high-minded interference in much of people's ordinary lives, has always been deeply unpopular with politicians and bureaucrats. And so, not surprisingly, the proposition has been vigorously contested. It was claimed that the free market was too unpredictable and chaotic to work unassisted; that "market failure" would obstruct desirable outcomes; above all, that only the state knew enough and cared enough for the common welfare to be entrusted with economic power. And down through the years, those of us who explained that "there is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people" we have been attacked for lacking that most nebulous of virtues–compassion.
In fact, there is (and always will be) a tendency for government to spend beyond its means. That is the inevitable counterpart of having the power to tax. But when economic profligacy becomes systematised, when politicians, bureaucrats and economists convince themselves that a beneficent state is able to suspend the laws and buck the rules which govern the behaviour of mere private individuals, something more dangerous sets in. At this point, government aims not just to influence the myriad decisions which constitute the market: it increasingly imposes a command economy in which all power resides at the centre with an all knowing, omnipotent state. Such a system can't, of course, permit economic freedom. Nor, ultimately, can it permit the other freedoms either. It runs square up against human nature and strives to change it. Homo sapiens thus becomes Homo Sovieticus.
Economists therefore have a duty, as much as the rest of us, to expose the follies and dangers of going down that path of interventionism. This is something which people like Friedrich Hayek clearly understood. Hayek combined in a powerful fashion observations based on experience and conclusions based on theory. In particular, Hayek explained how the apparently benevolent business of setting over-all social goals to be achieved by all-encompassing economic plans can't be compatible with liberty and the rule of law. Similarly, Milton Friedman, whose seminal work on the role of the money supply has transformed macro-economic policy, has always grasped the vital importance of living, breathing, free enterprise–of the "market", understood not just in an abstract but in a human sense.
The cases of Hayek and Friedman illustrate an crucial point, and one relevant to the work of this institution in Poznan: it is that although in economics the technicalities are important, they are not everything.
Yes: it is important to know how to measure the gross national product. But it is even more important to know where wealth comes from. And it "comes from" businesses satisfying customers, not from apparatchiks ratcheting up the targets in an economic plan.
Yes: it is important to ensure that sufficient is invested in the infrastructure, in education and in basic science. But it is even more important to recognise that, however worthily such money is spent, the government itself has no money –only other people's money, which it confiscates by taxation, devalues by inflation or borrows to be repaid by future generations.
Yes: it is important to investigate a country's natural resources in order to analyse its economic future. But it is still more important to recall that without the spark of invention, the flair of entrepreneurship and a climate which encourages initiative, none of that country's potential wealth will actually make its people wealthy.
In this letter to Hayek dated May 18, 1979, Margaret Thatcher, recently elected prime minister of Great Britain, acknowledges her intellectual debt to Hayek and indicates that her government intends to put his ideas into action.
Mário Lino à TSF: "Nunca me passou pela cabeça que alguém fosse interpretar a minha expressão "iberista" como se eu estivesse a defender a junção de Portugal e Espanha"
O ex-Presidente da República Jorge Sampaio estimou hoje que a próxima presidência portuguesa da União Europeia, no segundo semestre de 2007, vai ser "muito exigente".
British Prime Minister Tony Blair sacrificed two top ministers in a major cabinet shakeup on Friday after his Labour Party recorded one of its worst defeats in a local election since coming to power in 1997.
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The overhaul comes after accusations of government sleaze and incompetence over the past few weeks as well as the poor local election results, which put huge pressure on Blair to give his government new impetus or step aside.
Foreign minister Jack Straw and interior minister Charles Clarke lost their high-profile jobs while John Prescott, who is Blair's deputy and has been embroiled in a sex scandal, was stripped of his ministry.
Besides diverting attention away from the election results, Blair's promotion of key allies of finance minister Gordon Brown should keep his expected successor happy for now, analysts said.
But it also showed Blair had no intention of leaving yet.
"The fact that he has decided to reshuffle his cabinet is a sure sign he is intending to hang around for a while," said John Curtice, political analyst at Strathclyde University.
O secretário-geral do PCP, Jerónimo de Sousa, apelou esta quinta-feira aos portugueses para pedirem contas da crise económica não só aos partidos do «bloco central», mas também ao «economistas cortesãos» que receitam políticas neoliberais.
Many people believe that the free market, despite some admitted advantages, is a picture of disorder and chaos. Nothing is "planned," everything is haphazard. Government dictation, on the other hand, seems simple and orderly; decrees are handed down and they are obeyed. In no area of the economy is this myth more prevalent than in the field of money. Seemingly, money, at least, must come under stringent government control. But money is the lifeblood of the economy; it is the medium for all transactions. If government dictates over money, it has already captured a vital command post for control over the economy, and has secured a stepping-stone for full socialism. We have seen that a free market in money, contrary to common assumption, would not be chaotic; that, in fact, it would be a model of order and efficiency.
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