This is the hour of pretenders and social climbers. Down with politicians and welcome to those who politically embody anti-politics, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States, Macri in Argentina, etc.
In Ukraine, comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected president with 73% of the vote, without the backing of a structured party.
A powerful ideological machine that favors the privatization of the state is intent upon inducing people to no longer believe in politicians, parties, or public power. Now, it’s everyone for themselves and God for me. After the demonization of socialism, now we have the repudiation of liberal democracy, focused on the promotion of equal rights. Not even the social pact that laid the foundation for the welfare state deserves any credit lately.
Inequality grows. The system no longer confronts this reality as a problem, but rather as a solution, since increasing indebtedness for the poor means more wealth for the rich.
In the movie Batman, the shadowy Joker suggests: “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. And what is the key to chaos? Fear!”
Fear leads people to trade freedom for security. The condominiums of the rich are true luxury prisons. The amount of money spent on security companies, armored vehicles, and surveillance devices is exorbitant. And the government becomes an advertizing agent for the military industry.
The peace we all long for will not be the fruit of justice, as the prophet Isaiah proposed (32:17), but of the correlation of forces. Buy a gun; go to the firing range; turn your house into a fortress! Beloved homeland, Brazil!
If gun control, a yellow light on the possession of weapons, doesn’t keep delinquents from having guns supposedly exclusive to the armed forces, it is easy to imagine things when the light is green. Brazil, the world’s murder champion with more than 60,000 a year, is now seeing state incentives for gun sales. And, at no point, does the government ask about the cause of such a level of violence. Combating its effects is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. As Darcy Ribeiro said: “Fewer schools means more prisons.”
Many proposals have been made to reduce government spending, crowned by the “miraculous” social security reform. But no measures to increase income. Like progressive taxes. Between 2013 and 2016, tax income declined by 13%.
The government didn’t even consider eliminating benefits for those on top: extensions, subsidies, easy credit, tax exemptions, etc. In 2003, government freebies for the richest were equivalent to 3% of the GDP. In 2017, 5.4%. Tax extensions came to 2% of the GDP in 2003. In 2017, 4.1%. Financial subsidies and credits represented 1% of the GDP in 2003. In 2017, 1.3%.
If Brazil were to return to the 2003 level, in the categories mentioned above, 2.4% of the GDP would return to the economy annually. Or 24% of the GPD over 10 years, that is1,6 billion reales in 2018, 60% more than the amount to which Minister Guedes aspires with the social security reform.
According to Fagnani y Rossi (2018), spending 1% of the GDP on education and health care would mean an increase of 1.85 % in education and 1.7% in health. Every additional 1% invested in low-income subsidies and social security would increase family income by 2.25% (via the Bolsa Familia) and 2.11 % for those on social security.
A nation is not governed with shouting, and development must be promoted. Governing requires something many elected officials don’t want and don’t know how to conduct: politics. The art of seeking consensus and eliminating the causes of the most serious problems. But this is not for amateurs.
