One interviewed 102 financial market operators from Rio and São Paulo to gauge what they think about the government. The result was a harbinger of the end of the world: 98 believe that the economy will get worse, 90 do not trust the government and 85 think that the exemption for those earning up to five minimum wages is harmful.
This result has heads and tails. On one side, it shows what the “market” thinks, on the other how that same “market” thinks. (The giant who ran the American Central Bank put the word in quotation marks because he didn’t know what this ectoplasm was.)
The release of this research coincided with new data on the situation in Pindorama. With figures from 2023, the reported that extreme poverty fell from 31.6% to 27.4%. In absolute numbers, the poor numbered 67.7 million and stood at 59 million.
The “market” thinks that the exemption from Income Tax charges for the downstairs harms the economy. It echoes an old work by (1915-2012) where he showed how reactionary thinking maintains that social advances harm those they intend to benefit.
The government wants to compensate for the loss of revenue estimated at R$35 billion, resulting from relief for the lower floor, by charging a rate of up to 10% for those who have an income of more than R$600,000 per year and pay less than that.
This is a cunning (or naughty) way of taxing dividends. Go easy on independent professionals and heavy on the top floor. The doctor who earns R$600,000 a year and already pays income tax will take a bite. The millionaire who earns R$10 million and may pay less tax than the doctor will take a bite of R$1 million. That’s what the “market” doesn’t like.
A breath of the 19th century on the 21st
Pindorama has its peculiarities. You live in one of the most socially unequal countries and everyone is against inequality, as long as the bill goes to the other person.
Imagine if you decided to confiscate all land where intentional fires occur. This would include farms mortgaged to banks. Absurdity of absurdities, it cannot happen.
A similar thing already happened in 1888, when reactionary thinking collapsed, which had fueled smuggling and slavery itself for more than half a century.
was a happily married gaucho. He had governed Bahia, held three ministries and presided over the Empire’s council. In April 88 he wrote to Barão de Penedo (elegant foreign debt negotiator/broker with the House of Rothschild):
“Why the abolition law? In fact, it is done – and revolutionary. The terrified owners seek to contain the exodus – giving immediate freedom to their slaves. This is the secret of so many liberations.”
would come, approved at the drop of a hat. The day before, Cotegipe went to the Senate rostrum. He recognized that, at that point, there was no one “more unpopular in this land than me.”
He gave a long speech and at one point made an impeccable argument for the “market”:
“The owner who mortgaged the farm with slaves, because the law permitted it, decided on his motu proprio to free them, which according to our law constitutes a crime. (…) The banks, the private individuals, advanced immense sums to the development of farming, of farms. May they lose! (…) The truth is that there will be enormous disturbances in the country for many years, which I will not see, perhaps (…) If I am mistaken, they will plow in the country. my grave this epitaph: The so-called Baron of Cotegipe in the century, João Maurício Wanderley, was a visionary!”
He was a catastrophist reactionary. Abolition came the next day. Wanderley died nine months later and nothing happened, other than slavery ending.
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