Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
quinta-feira, 19 de fevereiro de 2015
Petrolao, Petralhabras, etc.: Juiz Moro responde ao Ministro da Injustissa
SwissLeaks: lista dos brasileiros com depositos no HSBC (procurem quem voces quiserem)
Vou esperar gente mais paciente...
Eu já sabia que tinha, portanto não há nenhuma novidade no fato em si.
Quanto aos nomes, não me ocupo de fofocas...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Emprego nao resulta necessariamente em crescimento economico - Frank Shostak (Mises)
Pois pense duas vezes. Think again.
Este artigo vai fazer você revisar essa opinião...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Employment Does Not Drive Economic Growth
Frank Shostak
Mises Daily, February 19, 2015
For the head of the Federal Reserve Board Janet Yellen — and most economists — the key to economic growth is a strengthening in the labor market. The strength of the labor market is the key behind the strength of the economy. Or so it is held. If this is the case then it is valid to conclude that changes in unemployment are an important causative factor of real economic growth.
This way of thinking is based on the view that a reduction in the number of unemployed persons means that more people can now afford to boost their expenditures. As a result, economic growth follows suit.
We Need More Wealth, Not Necessarily More Employment
The main driver of economic growth is an expanding pool of real wealth, gained through deferred consumption and increases in worker productivity. Fixing unemployment without addressing the issue of wealth is not going to lift economic growth as such.
It is the pool of real wealth that funds the enhancement and the expansion of the infrastructure, i.e., an expansion in capital goods per individual. An enhanced and expanded infrastructure permits an expansion in the production of the final goods and services required to maintain and promote individuals’ lives and well-being.
If unemployment were the key driving force of economic growth then it would have made a lot of sense to eradicate unemployment as soon as possible by generating all sorts of employment.
It is not important to have people employed as such, but to have them employed in wealth-generating activities. For instance, policy makers could follow the advice of Keynes and his followers and employ people in digging ditches, or various other government-sponsored activities. Note that the aim here is just to employ as many people as possible.
A simple commonsense analysis however quickly establishes that such a policy would amount to depletion in the pool of real wealth. Remember that every activity, whether productive or non-productive, must be funded. When the Fed or the federal government attempt to increase employment through various types of stimulus, this can result in the expansion of capital goods for non-wealth generating projects which leads to capital consumption instead of growth.
Hence employing individuals in various useless non-wealth generating activities simply leads to a transfer of real wealth from wealth generating activities and this undermines the real wealth-generating process.
Unemployment as such can be relatively easily fixed if the labor market were to be free of tampering by the government. In an unhampered labor market, any individual that wants to work will be able to find a job at a going wage for his particular skills.
Obviously if an individual demands a non-market related salary and is not prepared to move to other locations there is no guarantee that he will find a job.
For instance, if a market wage for John the baker is $80,000 per year, yet he insists on a salary of $500,000, obviously he is likely to be unemployed.
Over time, a free labor market makes sure that every individual earns in accordance to his contribution to the so-called overall “real pie.” Any deviation from the value of his true contribution sets in motion corrective competitive forces.
Purchasing Power Is Key
Ultimately, what matters for the well-being of individuals is not that they are employed as such, but their purchasing power in terms of the goods and services that they earn.
It is not going to be of much help to individuals if what they are earning will not allow them to support their life and well-being.
Individuals’ purchasing power is conditional upon the economic infrastructure within which they operate. The better the infrastructure the more output an individual can generate.
A higher output means that a worker can now command higher wages in terms of purchasing power.
Aumento de juros dificulta o ajuste - Antonio Correia de Lacerda
Perfeitamente correto.
Mas qual seria a alternativa, já que a inflação é um problema e o governo apostou durante muito tempo no estímulo ao crédito e ao consumo?
Aumentar o superávit fiscal, sem dúvida, mas quanto? Seria para 4, 5 ou 6%, o que daria para cobrir os juros, sem precisar aumentar o estoque da dívida (e o consequente acréscimo em juros)?
Isso provocaria recessão, segundo os keynesianos, com o que eu concordo.
Não aumentar juros, nem o superávit seria a opção dos anti-austeridade.
Sim, mas o que fazer com a dívida que já é alta, e com a inflação que promete ainda aumentar?
Não partilho da ideia de que o cenário internacional seja o fator negativo no presente.
As commodities podem até ter baixado um pouco, mas os preços permanecem em níveis historicamente elevados. Outros países emergentes estão fazendo melhor, e exportando, nesse cenário.
E o Japão, que carrega muito mais tempo do que qualquer outro país juros baixos, negativos de fato, também se faz acompanhar de uma bela estagnação que dura tanto tempo quanto.
Ou seja, não acredito que haja salvação fora do ajuste fiscal.
A menos que se queira deixar uma conta ainda mais salgada para nossos filhos e netos, claro. Ou para nós mesmos, o que aliás já é o caso...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Aumento de juros dificulta ajuste
Antonio Corrêa de Lacerda
O Estado de S. Paulo, 14/02/2015, p. B-2
Durante muito tempo, em passado recente, a politica fiscal, por ser considerada expansionista, era acusada de não colaborar com a politica monetária no combate à inflação. É curioso que vivenciamos neste momento a situação reversa. A política monetária pode comprometer os resultados almejados na área fiscal.
Ninguém tem dúvida da necessidade do ajuste. O problema é a dificuldade em fazê-lo, diante de um cenário econômico internacional ainda desafiador (queda dos preços das commodities, baixo dinamismo do comércio global, etc). Por outro lado, o quadro doméstico é igualmente complexo, que já vem de uma estagnação desde o ano passado, o que é agora agravado com as medidas de contenção já tomadas e o aumento do risco de racionamento hídrico e de energia. Diante deste arcabouço chama a atenção o aumento da taxa de juros Selic, agora em 12,25% ao ano - uma elevação de 5 pontos percentuais nos últimos dois anos !
O risco é que a combinação das medidas adotadas, diante da fragilidade do nível de atividades nos leve a uma recessão, o que por si só pode inviabilizar o ajuste fiscal pretendido. Nessa hora, cautela deveria ser o nome do jogo....
Enquanto nas principais economias do mundo as taxas de juros reais seguem negativas para suportar a atividade econômica, no Brasil a taxa de juros real continua acima de 5% a.a. e em elevação. Dado o fraco desempenho econômico aumentar a já elevada taxa Selic comprometerá ainda mais os investimentos produtivos e a retomada da economia. Além disso, em termos fiscais, acarretará um grande aumento nas despesas com os juros da dívida pública
O setor público consolidado apresentou um déficit primário R$ 32,5 bilhões (0,63% do PIB), no ano passado, o que representa uma inversão relativamente ao ocorrido em 2013, quando o resultado primário correspondeu a um superávit de R$ 91,3 bilhões (1,88% do PIB). Além disso, os elevados juros praticados (Selic) impactaram negativamente as contas públicas. O custo de financiamento da dívida pública atingiu R$ 311,4 bilhões (6,07% do PIB) no acumulado de 2014. Assim, o resultado nominal foi deficitário em R$ 343,9 bilhões (6,7% do PIB) no ano, mais do que dobrando, comparativamente ao ano anterior em que o déficit havia atingido R$ 157,6 bilhões (3,25% do PIB).
Diante do quadro deficitário das contas públicas, o Ministério da Fazenda segue implementando medidas restritivas, com contenção de gastos do governo e aumento de impostos visando atingir a meta de 1,2% do PIB de superávit primário em 2015. A questão é que as medidas de ajuste fiscal estão sendo implementadas em um cenário no qual há um desaquecimento das atividades econômicas e uma forte incerteza decorrentes de vários acontecimentos como, por exemplo, o risco de racionamento de água e energia.
Assim, as medidas adotadas na área fiscal combinado com a elevação dos juros pode potencializar uma piora no desempenho econômico e, consequentemente, o aumento de arrecadação esperado pelo governo pode não ocorrer. Além disso, nos últimos anos o custo do financiamento da dívida pública apresentou uma grande elevação e também foi responsável direto pela piora no resultado nominal. Com as constantes elevações da taxa Selic, para o ano de 2015 o custo de financiamento deve se manter em patamares próximos a 6% do PIB.
O setor produtivo segue se deteriorando. Na indústria, no ano de 2014, foi registrado um decréscimo de 3,2%, com quedas em todas as grandes categorias econômicas. Assim, houve recuo nos bens de capital (-9,6%), nos bens de consumo duráveis (-9,2%), nos bens de consumo semi e não duráveis (-0,3%) e nos bens intermediários (-2,7%).
O risco é que as medidas sejam “mais realistas que o rei” e provoquem uma queda ainda mais pronunciada na já fragilizada atividade econômica, inviabilizando o ajuste pretendido. Lembrando que cada elevação da taxa de juros representa, além do encarecimento do crédito e financiamento, também um aumento dos gastos com pagamentos de juros sobre a dívida pública. Um verdadeiro “tiro no pé”.
Antonio Corrêa de Lacerda é professor doutor, coordenador do Programa de Estudos Pós-graduados em Economia Política da PUC-SP e consultor. Site: www.aclacerda.com
Pausa para... o lingua alemao aprender (nein para das asylum vai) - Mark Twain
Tentem vocês também...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Caro Professor Paulo Roberto:
O que quis verbalizar e espero ter conseguido, é o que Mark Twain formula em próprias palavras. Alemães anglófonos morrem de rir (Há cemitérios só para eles).
Mark Twain
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."
N. B. -- I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen den Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the Parenthesis distemper -- though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1]
1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet.
That is from The Old Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state.
We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. For surely it is not clearness -- it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste.
The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:
"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."
However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.
Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance:
SINGULAR
Nominative -- Mein guter Freund, my good friend.
Genitive -- Meines guten Freundes, of my good friend.
Dative -- Meinem guten Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative -- Meinen guten Freund, my good friend.
PLURAL
N. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.
G. -- Meiner guten Freunde, of my good friends.
D. -- Meinen guten Freunden, to my good friends.
A. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.
Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. Difficult? -- troublesome? -- these words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.
The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house, Haus, or a horse, Pferd, or a dog, Hund, he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural -- which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie.
In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name.
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
"Gretchen.
Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
Wilhelm.
She has gone to the kitchen.
Gretchen.
Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
Wilhelm.
It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.
Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use -- the moment he begins to speak his tongue flies the track and all those labored males and females come out as "its." And even when he is reading German to himself, he always calls those things "it,"...
quarta-feira, 18 de fevereiro de 2015
Incompetencia gerencial como motivo de impeachment: o Paraguai ganha do Brasil
MegaHiperSuperCorrupcao Petralha: O Antagonista destampa a Caixa Preta Companheira
terça-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2015
O comercio do acucar: livro de Daniel Strum - Prêmio Odebrecht de Pesquisa Histórica (disponivel ebook)
Parabéns ao autor.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Ebooks do Prêmio Odebrecht de Pesquisa Histórica
O primeiro livro disponível é O Comércio do Açúcar, de Daniel Strum, disponível nas versões inglês e português. O eBook está em formato ePub, que é compatível com quase todos os leitores e tablets disponíveis no mercado. Caso queira ler em seu próprio computador ou converter para um formato diferente, sugerimos o programa Calibre.
O Comércio do Açúcar: Brasil, Portugal e Países Baixos (1595 - 1630)
The Sugar Trade: Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands (1595-1630)
O livro oferece uma visão panorâmica do comércio do açúcar entre Amsterdã, o Porto, Pernambuco e Bahia na sua época áurea, entre 1595 e 1630, mostrando como se dava o funcionamento internacional desse comércio naquela época, bem como os desafios e riscos que navegadores e comerciantes enfrentavam. Com riquíssima iconografia, mapas e imagens inéditas no Brasil, o livro mostra como a produção do açúcar transformou o espaço brasileiro, nos séculos XV e XVI, de modo dramático e indelével.Versão em Português
English version
21/01/2015
Elogios ao Açúcar
Quer acabar com a pobreza? Educacao, emprego e casamento - Brookings
Ou se pretende manter um exército de assistidos por mais de uma geração, como já está ocorrendo no Brasil, em que jovens que já estavam no Bolsa Família começam a ter filhos também dependentes da assistência pública.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
In today’s hearing, the Subcommittee is taking testimony about marriage and work, two of these three keys to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity. Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia will discuss the decline of married-couple families, the explosion of births outside marriage, and the consequent increase in the number of the nation’s children being reared by single (and often never-married) mothers. The increase in the proportion of children in female-headed families contributes to substantial increases in poverty by virtue of the fact that poverty rates in female-headed families are four to five times as great as poverty rates in married-couple families.[ii] If the share of the nation’s children in female-headed families continues to increase as it has been doing for four decades, policies to reduce poverty will be fighting an uphill battle because the rising rates of single-parent families will exert strong upward pressure on the poverty rate.[iii] But perhaps of even greater consequence, children reared in single-parent families are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to be arrested, less likely to go to college, more likely to be involved in a nonmarital birth, and more likely to be idle (not in school, not employed) than children from married-couple families.[iv] In this way, a disproportionate number of children from single-parent families carry poverty into the next generation and thereby minimize intergenerational mobility.
So far public and nongovernmental programs have not been able to reverse falling marriage rates or rising nonmarital birth rates, but there is a lot we have done and can do to increase work rates, especially the work rates of low-income mothers. The goal of my testimony today is to explain the government policies that have been adopted in recent decades to increase work rates and subsidize earnings, which in turn have led to substantial declines in poverty.
I make two points and a small number of recommendations. The first point is that the employment of low-income single mothers has increased over the two decades, in large part because of work requirements in federal programs, especially Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009 caused the employment rate of single mothers to fall (as well as nearly every other demographic group), but after both recessions work rates began to rise again.
The second point is that the work-based safety net is an effective way to boost the income of working families with children that would be poor without the work supports. In my view, this combination of work requirements and work supports is the most successful approach the nation has yet developed to fight poverty in single-parent families with children. Here’s the essence of the policy approach: first, encourage or cajole single mothers to work by establishing work requirements in federal welfare programs; second, subsidize the earnings of low-income workers, both to increase their work incentive and to help them escape poverty. The primary work-based safety-net programs are the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Additional Child Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), child care, and Medicaid.
Venezuela: outra piada chavista, mas sem qualquer graca, desta vez
El presidente venezolano, Nicolás Maduro, anunció su intención de celebrar en Madrid, del 1 al 3 de marzo próximos, lo que llamó Expo Venezuela, una exhibición de “los logros sociales” del chavismo pensada para el público español con el fin de “demoler en vivo y en directo las mentiras allá de la derecha franquista”. Maduro ordenó el pasado sábado por la noche la realización del evento durante una transmisión radiotelevisiva por cadena nacional (en todas las emisoras).
El plan está concebido como una refutación a la “campaña”, dijo, que la prensa española estaría desplegando, a su entender, para atacar al chavismo. Convocó a participar a “nuestros mejores artistas para cantar, a nuestros dramaturgos, a mostrar nuestro cine”, en el evento, al que ve como una réplica mejorada de Fitven, el festival turístico que anualmente organiza el Estado venezolano. “Que [los españoles] vean que aquí editamos más de 5.000 títulos y casi 20 millones de libros por año que se entregan gratis, que construimos 700.000 viviendas en apenas tres años y que este año vamos a entregar otras 400.000”.
Maduro no concretó dónde se celebraría la exposición, ni cuán adelantados están los preparativos. En cambio, sí reveló de dónde espera obtener la financiación: instruyó a su canciller, Delcy Rodríguez, a reunirse con los ejecutivos de las empresas españolas que hacen negocios en Venezuela para “obtener su apoyo”.