This post is an effort to share what is going on in Brazil, from a Marxist perspective, since most of the international news leave information out on purpose, to share how millions suffered in this pandemic because Bolsonaro liberalism policy. Feel free to share any criticism since this is my first post and English is not my first language.How is it possible for “the granary of the world” to experience price increases?There is an agency called Conab that is responsible for stockpile, information on agriculture, policies on prices, etc. On day 13/14 of last month we experienced a spike on productivity from 3.602 to 3.912, meaning that our harvest had increased, it actually broke records this year, producing 257.8 millions of tons (on grains only), 4.5% more the last year the same time.Why our country saw an increase of 20% on basic products like rice? This could be explained with the short answer that companies chose to export to the international market because the dollar had increased, meaning they would have a bigger profit on sales.Due to the current government closing distributions points that supply entire communities and reducing our stockpile throughout the years, beans and soy had their stockpile brought to zero in 4 years (2016-2020) as you can see here, other type of grains also had a drop of about 96%. Citing José Guilherme Vieira, an economist from Paraná University, “The reduction on stockpile was completely wrong. The formation of stocks are a guarantee the people can have food, it’s food safety and price regulation.” A liberal policy caused all of this, because they were “following market rules”. The government excuse was that it has a high maintenance cost, they chose to gamble our food stocks in order to “liberalize” the economy more.What were the consequences?Most of low-income families spend the largest amount of their paycheck on food, I will leave this article here from 2015 that goes deeper into it, I will leave the price of gas, transport and rent out of this because we are focusing on food solely, but they had an impact as well.Meat had the price elevated by 3.42%, rice by 10%, milk by 5.60%, beans had a fall on August but their price increased by 30% since then; a package about 5kg of rice is 15R$ (2.67 US dollars) it went up to 40-45(7.13 US dollars) depending on the region, low-income families make about 1$ per day of work, so it isn’t enough for a family to have health daily intake.The average worker had a decrease about 20% on his monthly paycheck, with the most affected being black families and indigenous (natives). You can check on this study here for more in depth information on different shares of the population. The results were that the majority chose to work informally, on exploitive jobs, such as Uber for example, otherwise they would not have enough money to buy food and all other necessities required.During this period, 42 billionaires had their fortunes increased by US$ 48,2 billion, about R$ 265,5 billion converted to Brazil currency; the rich were the least affected in this pandemic, because the government decided to throw all the responsibility on low income families and middle class. Bolsonaro made a speech on the UN and I quote, “Our government boldly implemented several economic measures that prevented the greatest evil – Provided emergency aid in plots that add up to approximately US$ 1,000 for 65 million people, the largest assistance program for the poorest in Brazil and perhaps one the largest of the world…”Bolsonaro provided US$ 100 for the 65 million, minimum wage is around 186 US dollars as I’ve stated before, the ideal minimum wage to live a comfortable life, being able to afford everything needed, would have to be around US$ 790, for a family of 4 people. The result is that most families received less than minimum and now the government decided to cut 50% of the emergency aid, eventually cutting it from R$600 to R$300.Most of the sources provided are in Portuguese or at least have some part of it in Portuguese, I would be happy to make a translation to all of it if someone is interested. via /r/communism https://ift.tt/3jGMlvv
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