Everything became a political party issue: from condominium meetings to football clubs, from faith to business decisions. Not participating in the debate is no longer an option. The “exempt” will inevitably be allocated at some point in Nolan’s diagram, which demonstrates each person’s political position according to the result of an ideological test.
We live in an increasingly less pluralistic society. We create affinity friendships and get closer to people who share similar values and opinions to ours. Social networks have replicated this mental model, connecting us to individuals from anywhere in the world who share the same ideological basis. The problem is that this leads us to cultural isolation, a bubble in which, without realizing it, we start to see the world only from our own perspective.
It is no wonder that right-wing protesters do not understand how they could lose an election, just as left-wing activists do not accept that the results of the polls were so balanced. After all, “everyone” on your social networks thinks the same way.
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The fact is: what kind of society are we forming? Without debate, we provide no opportunity to consolidate our opinions or build solid arguments in defense of our beliefs. Points and counterpoints should always be welcome, as they allow us to mature our values and even change our opinions.
Even more worrying is the realization that we are creating a less tolerant society, in which violence resulting from political disagreements may become acceptable. A recent YouGov survey, released in September 2025 in the United States, revealed that 70% of the population over 65 believe that political violence is a serious problem. Among young people aged 18 to 29, only 50% expressed the same concern. A possible explanation is its proximity to history. Adults over 65 grew up under the shadow of the horrors of World War II and the Cold War. Young people were born in times of peace, grew up connected to the internet and accustomed to the facilities of technology.
Geopolitical conflicts have emerged globally, and society reacts polarized. Not because there are technical reasons for polarization, but because everything is interpreted through an ideological lens. In a hyperconnected world, we are continually exposed to narratives about the same event. A geopolitical decision becomes a political narrative. A political narrative becomes social consternation. Nothing is technical, everything is political.
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Economic analyses, often reduced to econometric and statistical models, fail to capture this political dimension of reality. Economics is, fundamentally, social science. Observance of political-social behavior plays a vital role in the activity of an economist. Ignoring polarization is analyzing economic variables without understanding the institutional framework in which we are inserted.
In a polarized society, the government not only governs, it competes for the legitimacy of the political narrative. The most tangible expression of this competition is the increase in spending on state advertising. The Communications Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom) more than doubled spending on internet advertising in 2024. The total budget for social communications in 2025 exceeds R$1.5 billion, the highest in the last ten years. This is structured promotion of the Presidency of the Republic, not neutral communication.
At the same time, the government faces a daunting fiscal scenario. Expenses grow above revenue in real terms, resulting in growing debt. The National Treasury Secretariat estimates that, by December 2026, the debt will reach 82.5% of GDP, growth of approximately 11 percentage points since 2022. This trajectory forces the adoption of a contractionary monetary policy: high interest rates for longer. Polarization accentuated the fiscal imbalance.
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Here lies the critical point. Political polarization is not a sociological phenomenon disconnected from the economy. It is one of the vectors of economic inefficiency. A society that cannot objectively debate fiscal policy issues will never be able to make necessary structural reforms. Not because there is a lack of technicians. But because economic decisions are hostage to political narratives. Spending on state propaganda is a symptom that government legitimacy depends on narrative management and the economic results of public policies are secondary.
For investors and companies, this is critically relevant. An economy in which public spending grows because polarization demands “narrative victory” is an economy subjected to high government spending, persistent inflation and contractionary monetary policy. High interest rates will not decline until the Executive demonstrates commitment to fiscal austerity. But austerity, in a polarized society, does not generate votes. Therefore, it keeps the economy’s structural interest rate high.
Brazil is not experiencing a democratic crisis, but rather an institutional crisis resulting from the choice to politicize everything. This choice reverberates in the trajectory of public debt, interest rates and above all in the efficiency of public spending. As long as the economic debate is tied to political narratives, economists and investors must calibrate projections. The issue is no longer merely economic. It’s institutional.
