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 Here’s a positive lesson to be taken from this almost always maladroit globalization concept: no nation is an island. All is interconnected, much like the way we used to learn in those rudimentary physics classes, delight of students as they stumbled upon the miracle of the communicating vases system. The poured water reaches the same level, no matter the size of the communicating recipients.
The preamble helps to explain the fallacy of the neo-liberal argumentation that everything must be separately profitable, because if it doesn’t make money on its own, it’d better disappear.
Babies, for example, don’t generate profits. Only expenses. They require investments in diapers, milk that contributes to the growth of babies. Let’s not do away with them because they don’t work and don’t add to the family’s income.
Again the Presidency
Then social security, where, according to rumors going around, is bound to be meddled with once more. Naturally for the worse, that is, against beneficiaries.
One after another, storms are made out of the fact that benefits and pensions to government employees cause financial loss, accounts don’t balance, and soon insolvency will follow.
And the communicating vases? Why pay Income Tax? Only to keep the Internal Revenue Service machine functioning? Would the tax on all automotive vehicles’ only use be to support the Departments of Motor Vehicles? The goal in charging property tax to provide for collectors?
If social security is a financial losing proposition, if funds lack in order to meet retirement pensions, will the remedy be to kill all retirees and pensioners, because they generate loss? Or wouldn’t logic indicate that resources can and must come from other provisions?
The parade of examples would be endless, from the Armed Forces, who don’t produce anything but are absolutely necessary, to state universities, that don’t charge tuition, but need to pay professors.
Close them down, privatize them, or acknowledge the obvious—that upon them rests the nation’s future, thus, worthy of the investment, just as those babies are.
Action Is Called For
Action must be taken against such assaults, ironically conducted now, at the halfway mark of Lula’s—labor based and for the people—administration. If a citizen joins the public service sector, he/she is taking on rights and obligations inherent to that working class.
He/she is aware that a pre-determined number of years of service must be put in order to retire, will be subject to specific regulations, may be transferred, as well as, by going into retirement, will earn the same as he/she had been making while in activity.
The government can’t, nor can Congress, as it anticipates for next year, determine that inactive state employees will only receive a random and undignified limited amount, established long after the individual enrolled in public service. By the way, the same principle applies for retirees from the private sector, but that is an issue for another day.
That salary caps for those who work be fixed, great. But let’s not level everyone at the bottom, and, worse yet, take away from specific labor groups, such as the military and educators, rights that they conquered.
Of course, to reiterate, with the safeguard that above a certain ceiling no one should be paid, neither in activity nor retirement. It’s not plausible, however, to accept a ceiling of misery, and, particularly, retirement pensions below the income of when in service.
It gets worse. This government of the people and of workers wants to get to where eight years of ravaging neo-liberal administration wasn’t capable of: the proposal now will be to create a deduction from private sector retirees, in the heels of the state employees’ massacre. That is, only for final retirement, in Heaven or in Hell.
An Insensitive Team
We keep thinking that the insensitiveness of technocrats is all the same, be they from the Workers Party or the Social Democracy. Under the pretext of balancing social security accounts, overlooking that more important are the nation’s books, the government is sending the tab to retirees. Let them pay or disappear.
This latest raid into the people’s pockets won’t work, inflicting mediocrity to the middle class and misery to the poor. Especially by poking such hornets’ nests as the Judiciary and the Armed Forces.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected by the indignation vote of 53 million Brazilians who could not tolerate the commandments of neo-liberalism any longer. If the recipe remains the same, the least to be expected will be frustration. And after that?...
Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.
Translated from the Portuguese by Eduardo Assumpção de Queiroz. He is a freelance translator, with a degree in Business and almost 20 years of experience working in the fields of economics, communications, social and political sciences, and sports. He lives in Boca Raton, FL. His email: eaqus@adelphia.net.
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The reality is that there is no magic solution or overnight miracle. Moreover, it is necessary that the whole population develops a better conscience of a society and start participating directly in the development of the country. In Brazil the people, including most of the intellectuals, believe that the government is the only vector of development; that is a distorted concept. Without a people with a right notion of society there is no great government and in spite of that, Lula is doing better than I expected.
Obviously, Lula is not perfect and lacks even a high level of education but so what? How many well educated people in Brazil have really shown understanding of the basic needs of the people and act upon? So far, none. I recognize that Brazil has enormous needs in education and much better trained high tech professionals, such as engineers, scientists, technicians and even politicians, administrators and lawyers who understand high technology. But the education of the Brazilian population in general cannot be done in a very short time or by imposition from the top. This has to be done democratically through motivation and support of the talented individuals during many years to come.
Lula reflects the reality of Brazil of the present, an economy based in low tech and agriculture, with some exceptions here and there and we need to understand that. The Brazilian economy is walking in the direction it has to go at the present and then, eventually, shift to high tech economy, producing advanced technology able to compete with Japan, China, Europe and United States. And, finally, the majority of Brazilians need to walk into 21st century, they are living in the 19th century, noticeable when someone travels in Brazil even in big cities such as Sao Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte.