I found this interesting. Cut high taxes, Brazil's poor say In the slums, many are hoping Lula takes a pro-business path... Sun-sentinel
It seems like the poor in Brazil that were featured in the article are seeing the connection between lower business taxes and reduced poverty because lower taxes allows businesses to expand and diversify the economy. Welfare programs can be helpful to the poor,but they seem geared towards not ending poverty but making poverty bearable. To really move people out of poverty you need an increase in educational attainment along with policies,especially tax policies,that are going to encourage more job growth from both foriegn and domestic investors.
What are you trying to discuss here, exactly? How parochial the lower economic strata of Brazil is? Or whether left or right wing economic policies are more beneficial to the poor of a developing economy? Or on the efficiency of Lula's economic policies? Maybe narrow it down a bit.
What did you get from reading the article? Well I and the point of the article may be focusing more on this to the extent that lower business taxes are viewed by many as a "right winged" way to encourage job creation for the poor, and higher taxes to redistribute wealth through welfare programs is considered "left wing" which these particular Brazilans don't want to be the main emphasis on the part of Lula for reducing poverty. Like I mentioned,I got from the article that these particular Brazilians are seeing the connection between lower and less business taxes and how it can help to expand needed entreprenurship,which they are seeing as a more productive route out of poverty. Companies in Brazil have to pay as many as 61 different taxes. This is the type of thing that these Brazilians are seeing as needing to change if more are going to benefit from needed job growth.
I'll admit I only skimmed it, but it seemed to be pushing a parochial view of the government onto the poor of Brazil based on a few random case studies rather than any pure statistical data. (Parochial referring to the level of confidence the people have in the government. Thus the Brazilian's criticism of the welfare program may actually be a complaint against the government's efficiency rather than an actual dislike for the concept of Welfare). *If you're really interested, I'll run it through the search functions for a couple RAT and Behaviouralistic academic journals I have access to and see if I can dig up corresponding statistics. A couple of other assumptions seemed to jump out at me: That Lula is necessarily all that left-wing, and that Brazilians don't seem to dig his economic policies. I've seen plenty of opinions to the contrary, but they may be true. I haven't really given the issue all that much consideration. Chavez tends to colour the whole of South America in most people's eyes.
Or it could be a matter of emphasis. These Brazilians might not be against welfare programs or saftey nets. It could be that they don't agree with welfare programs as being the primary way to move people out of poverty. Instead they are seeing wealth creation through expanding and making it easier to start businesses as where the emphasis to fighting poverty should be. Welfare for fighting poverty seems by nature to be more of a short term solution. Emphasizing welfare as the primary way to dealing with poverty will require more and higher taxes. The same heavy taxation,especially business taxes,that can hurt the job creation and investment that they are seeing as being the better long term route out of poverty for Brazil. Using taxation to fund a large welfare program can become a strain on a budget especially when trying to help the huge numbers of poor you have in a country like Brazil. When it's all said and done poor people are going to need jobs and a variety of them to choose from to better help them move out of poverty long term. Which is why Brazil's tax policy needs to be changed to help encourage more investment to diversify it's economy.
I'm not debating the pros and cons of a welfare state - I'm familiar with the arguments. I'm arguing that the article is attempting to make these views seem widespread without a)any statistics that back that up and b)any alternative causes to this view.
Higher wages for the working poor would accomplish more than any welfare program. But lower taxes won't accomplish that. Businesses rarely pass on increased profits to the workforce.
poor want tax cuts?? i think the police there still drive around of a night and shoot the street kids like vermin i think the first thing the poor want is the government to stop killing them!
