标题: An Overview of Brazil [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 4-28-2016 18:56 标题: An Overview of Brazil John Lyons and David Luhnow, Brazil's Giant Problem; Corruption is just a symptom of Brazil's deeper issue: a vast state apparatus that has tried to be the country's engine of economic growth.Wall Street Journal, Apr 23, 2016. www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-giant-problem-1461359723
Quote:
(a) "Founded by Portuguese monarchs who moved their court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808, Brazil has experienced almost every conceivable sort of rule over the past two centuries. Its leaders have run the gamut from emperors and dictators to democrats and former Marxists. Regardless of their politics, however, almost all of them have shared a commitment to the Leviathan state as the engine of progress.
" 'The problem is, from time immemorial, Brazil's political leaders only see one way forward, the growth of the state,' said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former leftist intellectual who sought to reduce the size of Brazil's government while president from 1995 to 2002. 'But you need another springboard for progress, that doesn't exclude the state but that accepts markets. This just doesn't sink in in Brazil.'
(b) "A sensation of déjà vu hangs over Brasília [capital] right now. The current downturn follows one of Brazil's greatest booms. * * * The economy surged 7.6% in 2010 * * * But the country has been here before. With 10% annual growth in the 1970s
(c) "Its [Brazil's] population of 200 million is mixed, including descendants from a dark past of slavery (Brazil imported more slaves than the US.)
(d) "One explanation for Brazil's stop-and-start [a more common adjective is 'stop-and-go'] development path is reliance on commodities. The country is even named for one: Brazilwood, used to make red dye [extracted from wood] in the 16th century. Brazil’s history can be told through commodities cycles, from sugar in the mid-1500s to coffee and rubber in the 1800s. In the early 2000s, iron, oil and soy positioned Brazil to soar as Chinese demand for the goods surged.
(e) "Brazil's leaders spent much of the 20th century attempting to diversify away from natural resources, but their approach almost always relied on state banks and state companies—and it failed time and again. * * * There is no major political party advocating limited government. * * * Unlike other nations in the New World, Brazil never had a revolution that set it in opposition to an intrusive state. * * * The result today is a bureaucracy that spends 41% of the country's gross domestic product—about double the rate of the US. The return for all that tax money is questionable: poorly built roads, ports and bridges, and second-rate education and health services.
Note:
(a) In print, the essay occupies more than one page -- quite lengthy. There is no need to read the rest, though the first half seems intriguing.
section 2 History: The land now called Brazil was claimed for the Portuguese Empire [in] 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral. * * * By the mid-16th century, cane sugar had become Brazil's most important exportation product, and slaves * * * had become its largest import, to cope with plantations of sugarcane * * * Portugal officially recognized Brazil on 29 August 1825
(i) The Portuguese surname Cabral is name of many places, "from Latin capra goat."
(ii) In late 1807 Maria I was 73 years old.
Maria I of Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_I_of_Portugal
(1734 – 1816; Queen 1777 – 1816; When her father succeeded to the throne in 1750 as José I, Maria, at age 16 and as his eldest child, became his heiress presumptive; In "1792, she was deemed mentally insane * * * Maria's second son (eldest surviving) and new heir-apparent, John [Portuguese: João], took over the government in her name, even though he only took the title of Prince Regent in 1792")
(c) "Perhaps the most insidious legacy of Brazilian's Leviathan state is the country's endemic corruption. * * * Brazil's Leviathan grew so great that it gave rise to a popular theory that corruption could be a good thing because it 'greased the wheels' of otherwise paralyzed bureaucracies. The idea was outlined in a 1964 paper by the American economist Nathaniel Leff, who worked extensively in Brazil. That view was challenged in the 1990s by economists such as Paulo Mauro, who saw that corruption directly inhibits development: Officials make investments based not on the country's best interests but on the size of the bribes they get."
insidious (adj; from Latin insidiae ambush, from insidēre to sit in, sit on, from in- + sedēre to sit):
"harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE <insidious drugs>" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insidious