Uruguay: A Wel-Fairy Tale

Once upon a time in 1952 the 3,000,000 people of Uruguay voted to have a nine-man council instead of a President, and everyone cried hooray. Even though they didn't always agree, the council members tried hard to get along, and the land, which was already very welfare-minded, became even more so. One-fourth of all the workers got jobs with the government at which they worked only half a day; and for every 2½ people working, there was one who had retired at 45, sometimes with full pay. It was wonderful. The people didn't worry because they had all those benefits. The government didn't worry about how much it was all costing because the people were not worrying. And statesmen in other lands didn't worry much about that nice, prosperous, Swiss-style country because there were other things to worry about.

Last week in Uruguay: — The stock market was reeling from the effect of an unprecedented three-week strike by brokers. They went out when the government announced plans for imposing impossibly stiff regulations on market trade and landholding companies, who must sell off all their property within a year as part of the land-reform program.

> The huge government work force was threatening to strike unless salaries were increased 35%, and the government was expected to bow to the demands, grant its employees their fourth substantial raise in five years. — Disheartened economists were sadly contemplating a batch of disastrous financial figures. The value of the peso has crash dived from 90 to 50 in 20 months. The cost of living went up 45% last year, has climbed 30% more this year. The government's proposed $258 million budget for 1965 includes a planned deficit of $29 million; others say it will be more like $83 million. The gross national product over the last six measured years (1955-61) expanded only a paltry $8 million, though projected figures at the start of the period assumed a $70 million gain.

Most people in Uruguay really could not accept that they had had too much of a good thing, and were faced with shattering economic collapse. They reminded each other proudly that beef export is up, chose to forget that wool export, the country's other major product, is generally down. Despite the fact that as much as 50% of a man's salary may be withheld against social benefits, and that much of this withholding is illegally used by capital-starved companies, politicians anxious to please the people called for more benefits.