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I don't think that as got anything to do with the size of the country. Actually i don't consider Portugal a tiny country, at least in European terms it's a medium size country (the 19th largest in a continent with 50 countries).
The main reason Portugal is doing so well in certain areas, like the ATM and internet services, for instance, is because the country departed so much later than others, thus allowing better services with better technology.
The ATM is excellent and benefited from the demand and pressure of the internal consumption since the mid 1990's (and the easy access to credit) that allowed information technologies to be highly adopted by the banking system.
It's not about the time and effort to link up the country, but the time, effort and money one saves with using this system that allows more than 60 services in a blink of an eye.
Actually it's one of the great achievements in Portugal in the quite recent society of consumption. This one not even the Troika wants to change anything.
I always buy my train tickets on the ATM Haven't seen that option in other countries, yet, if I remember correctly.
I consider them second world countries, kind of in the same place as Russia and parts of eastern Europe.
Meantime the income and regional gdp is higher than some regional areas of Germany, France, UK, Finland...
People work there too, you know? You remind me of someone who thought that most of the population of Portugal were fishermen and sailors.
International propaganda to attribute bad reputation (like that pigs bs) to some countries.
Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain have a better Quality of Life compared to USA.
Should we consider USA to be a 3rd world country too?
That data is from 2011, I do think those four countries (and Ireland etc.) slipped a few spots during the economic crisis there, but they have certainly not dropped out of the 1st world ranks...
In my opinion, they are still first-world countries.
However, some of them are "firster" than others.
So, Greece is probably a "first-"-world. First with the minus.
I think it's still more developed than so-called "2nd world", i.e. ex-communist countries and such.
These countries are definitely first world although they do certainly have parts which are impoverished just like in every country in the world. It is true that southern europe has been hit particularly hard by financial crisis (oh please it's been 6 years now lets name the puppy) DEPRESSION but that doesn't mean that all the services of a typical 1st world nation are not available. Where I lived in Abruzzo it is teaming with brand new construction (they cover the condos here with slabs of marble!!), shopping malls, night clubs, beach establishments. Again, nothing is missing here that i didn't have in NJ growing up except....the money has been recently taken out of the equation. Besides the fact the Euro was an all around bad idea for southern Europe because Italy's buying power was halved there is also a lot of corruption (which you can read all about in my previous posts).
The thing is though with Italy it is such a shame to see just how corruption corrodes everything that was once good. The italians are known the world over for their craftsmanship and quality made products. The country on paper shouldn't be in such shambles but it is due unfortunately to indifference and Italy's incapacity to face the future. For instance there is a phenomenon I call the Italian paradox.
Italy produces some of the worlds best scientists and researches however Italy is the industrialized country which spends the least on research and development so by default many of it's brighter are forced to go overseas. This is also called "scappo die cervelli" which means literally "escape of the brains!"
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Haven't seen that option in other countries, yet, if I remember correctly.
