Brazil’s economy| The 50-Year Snooze. Brazilian workers are gloriously unproductive. For the economy to grow, they must snap out of their stupor.
www.economist.com/news/americas/ ... -they-must-snap-out
Note:
(a) “PECKISH revellers at Lollapalooza, a big music festival in São Paulo earlier this month, were in for a treat. In contrast to past years’ menus of reheated hamburgers, they could plump for pulled pork, barbecue ribs or corn on the cob, courtesy of BOS BBQ, a Texan eatery in the city. More surprising than the fare, however, was the pace at which BOS’s two tents dished it out. Over the course of two days the booths, each manned by six people, served 12,000 portions, or more than one every 15 seconds, boasts Blake Watkins, who runs the restaurant. Such efficiency is as welcome as it is uncommon. Neighbouring stands needed two to three minutes to serve each customer, leading to lengthy lines and rumbling stomachs. ‘The moment you land in Brazil you start wasting time,’ laments Mr Watkins, who moved to the country three years ago after selling a fast-food business in New York. To be sure of having at least ten temporary workers at Lollapalooza, he hired 20 (sure enough, only half of them turned up). Lu Bonometti, who opened a cookie shop 18 months ago in a posh neighbourhood of São Paulo, has commissioned four different firms to fix her shop sign. None has come. Few cultures offer a better recipe for enjoying life. But the notion of opportunity cost seems lost on most Brazilians. Queues, traffic jams, missed deadlines and other delays have been so ubiquitous for so long that ‘Brazilians have become anaesthetised to them,’ says Regis Bonelli of Fundação Getulio Vargas, a business school.”
(i) peckish (adj; from peck (vi): “CARP, NAG”): “chiefly British : hungry”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peckish
(ii) Lollapalooza
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollapalooza
(conceived by Perry Farrell (born Perry Bernstein, an American, 1959- ; section 1 Etymology: Americanism
(iii) BOS BBQ
bosbbq.blogspot.com/
(“EST. 2012[;] Barbecue Kitchen & Bar”)
Everything else in the website is written in Portuguese.
(b) “Total-factor productivity, which gauges the efficiency with which both capital and labour are used, is lower now than it was in 1960. Labour productivity accounted for 40% of Brazil’s GDP growth between 1990 and 2012, compared with 91% in China and 67% in India, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. The remainder came from an expansion of the workforce as a result of favourable demography, formalisation and low unemployment. This will slow to 1% a year in the next decade, says Mr Bonelli.”
This is, in plain English, the best definition I have seen--better than those in Economics textbooks. Compare
total factor productivity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity
(is a variable which accounts for effects in total output not caused by traditionally measured inputs of labor and capital)
(c) “Less obviously, many Brazilian companies are unproductive because they are badly managed. John van Reenen of the London School of Economics found that although its best firms are just as well run as top-notch American and European ones, Brazil (like China and India) has a long, fat tail of highly inefficient ones. * * * Many hire trusted kith or kin rather than a better-qualified stranger”
kith (n): “familiar friends, neighbors, or relatives <kith and kin>”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kith
(d) “Punitively high tariffs on imported technology—such as the whopping 80% cumulative tax slapped on foreign smartphones—make many productivity-enhancing gizmos prohibitively expensive, says José Scheinkman of Columbia University. Rather than buy cheaper and better products from abroad, firms have to pay over the odds for lower-quality local ones.”
over the odds:
"UK INFORMAL: more than something is really worth <It's a nice enough car but I'm sure she paid over the odds for it>
"dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/over-the-odds
(e) “Mr [Marcos] Lisboa [of Insper university] highlights two salutary examples from recent years. Agriculture was deregulated in 1990, allowed to consolidate and gain access to foreign machines, fertiliser and pesticides. A few years later, financial services enjoyed far-reaching institutional reforms to boost the supply of credit and bolster capital markets. Both were left in peace—and became roughly 4% more efficient each year in the decade that followed. Brazilian soyabean producers are now the envy of the world. Mr Watkins, the restaurateur, praises the banking system as something that works more quickly in Brazil than it does in the United States. * * * if Brazil is to grow beyond 2020, when the working-age population will begin to decline as a share of the total, it will have to tackle its productivity problem.”
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发表于 5-10-2014 17:05:07
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