#brazilian economy

[ansmf]

[bookloversofbath]

Brazil: Land of the Future :: Stefan Zweig

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

‘Morally, nobody’s against it’: Brazil’s radical plan to tax global super-rich to tackle climate crisis

A 2% levy would affect about 100 billionaire families, says the country’s climate chief, but the $250bn raised could be transformative

Proposals to slap a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could yield $250bn (£200bn) a year to tackle the climate crisis and address poverty and inequality, but would affect only a small number of billionaire families, Brazil’s climate chief has said.

Ministers from the G20 group of the world’s biggest developed and emerging economies are meeting in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, where Brazil’s proposal for a 2% wealth tax on those with assets worth more than $1bn is near the top of the agenda.

No government was speaking out against the tax, said Ana Toni, who is national secretary for climate change in the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Our feeling is that, morally, nobody’s against,” she told the Observer in an interview. “But the level of support from some countries is bigger than others.”

However, the lack of overt opposition does not mean the tax proposal is likely to be approved. Many governments are privately sceptical but unwilling to publicly criticise a plan that would shave a tiny amount from the rapidly accumulating wealth of the planet’s richest few, and raise money to address the pressing global climate emergency.

Janet Yellen, the US Treasury ­secretary, told journalists in Rio that the US “did not see the need” for a global initiative.

Continue reading.

[solokabuto]

what is atalante's profile like in chaldea twitter adventures? same goes for mordred sumanai and achilles

Won’t be able to do the latter two atm but I can give you Atalante and Mordred!

[rga531]

no way

[bunibelles]

My first time at this grocery store

I go to the regular aisle and the cheapest tapioca flour is 4.19

I go to the Asian aisle for something different and I find another tapioca flour! It’s 1.99 😭

[fatehbaz]

On May 28, 1914, the Institut für Schiffs-und Tropenkrankheiten (Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases, ISTK) in Hamburg began operations in a complex of new brick buildings on the bank of the Elb. The buildings were designed by Fritz Schumacher, who had become the Head of Hamburg’s building department (Leiter des Hochbauamtes) in 1909 after a “flood of architectural projects” accumulated following the industrialization of the harbor in the 1880s and the “new housing and working conditions” that followed. The ISTK was one of these projects, connected to the port by its [...] mission: to research and heal tropical illnesses; [...] to support the Hamburg Port [...]; and to support endeavors of the German Empire overseas.

First established in 1900 by Bernhard Nocht, chief of the Port Medical Service, the ISTK originally operated out of an existing building, but by 1909, when the Hamburg Colonial Institute became its parent organization (and Schumacher was hired by the Hamburg Senate), the operations of the ISTK had outgrown [...]. [I]ts commission by the city was an opportunity for Schumacher to show how he could contribute to guiding the city’s economic and architectural growth in tandem, and for Nocht, an opportunity to establish an unprecedented spatial paradigm for the field of Tropical Medicine that anchored the new frontier of science in the German Empire. [...]

[There was a] shared drive to contribute to the [...] wealth of Hamburg within the context of its expanding global network [...]. [E]ach discipline [...] architecture and medicine were participating in a shared [...] discursive operation. [...]

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The brick used on the ISTK façades was key to Schumacher’s larger Städtebau plan for Hamburg, which envisioned the city as a vehicle for a “harmonious” synthesis between aesthetics and economy. [...] For Schumacher, brick [was significantly preferable] [...]. Used by [...] Hamburg architects [over the past few decades], who acquired their penchant for neo-gothic brickwork at the Hanover school, brick had both a historical presence and aesthetic pedigree in Hamburg [...]. [T]his material had already been used in Die Speicherstadt, a warehouse district in Hamburg where unequal social conditions had only grown more exacerbated [...]. Die Speicherstadt was constructed in three phases [beginning] in 1883 [...]. By serving the port, the warehouses facilitated the expansion and security of Hamburg’s wealth. [...] Yet the collective profits accrued to the city by these buildings [...] did not increase economic prosperity and social equity for all. [...] [A] residential area for harbor workers was demolished to make way for the warehouses. After the contract for the port expansion was negotiated in 1881, over 20,000 people were pushed out of their homes and into adjacent areas of the city, which soon became overcrowded [...]. In turn, these [...] areas of the city [...] were the worst hit by the Hamburg cholera epidemic of 1892, the most devastating in Europe that year. The 1892 cholera epidemic [...] articulated the growing inability of the Hamburg Senate, comprising the city’s elite, to manage class relationships [...] [in such] a city that was explicitly run by and for the merchant class [...].

In Hamburg, the response to such an ugly disease of the masses was the enforcement of quarantine methods that pushed the working class into the suburbs, isolated immigrants on an island, and separated the sick according to racial identity.

In partnership with the German Empire, Hamburg established new hygiene institutions in the city, including the Port Medical Service (a progenitor of the ISTK). [...] [T]he discourse of [creating the school for tropical medicine] centered around city building and nation building, brick by brick, mark by mark.

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Just as the exterior condition of the building was, for Schumacher, part of a much larger plan for the city, the program of the building and its interior were part of the German Empire and Tropical Medicine’s much larger interest in controlling the health and wealth of its nation and colonies. [...]

Yet the establishment of the ISTK marked a critical shift in medical thinking [...]. And while the ISTK was not the only institution in Europe to form around the conception and perceived threat of tropical diseases, it was the first to build a facility specifically to support their “exploration and combat” in lockstep, as Nocht described it.

The field of Tropical Medicine had been established in Germany by the very same journal Nocht published his overview of the ISTK. The Archiv für Schiffs- und Tropen-Hygiene unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Pathologie und Therapie was first published in 1897, the same year that the German Empire claimed Kiaochow (northeast China) and about two years after it claimed Southwest Africa (Namibia), Cameroon, Togo, East Africa (Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda), New Guinea (today the northern part of Papua New Guinea), and the Marshall Islands; two years later, it would also claim the Caroline Islands, Palau, Mariana Islands (today Micronesia), and Samoa (today Western Samoa).

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The inaugural journal [...] marked a paradigm shift [...]. In his opening letter, the editor stated that the aim of Tropical Medicine is to “provide the white race with a home in the tropics.” [...]

As part of the institute’s agenda to support the expansion of the Empire through teaching and development [...], members of the ISTK contributed to the Deutsches Kolonial Lexikon, a three-volume series completed in 1914 (in the same year as the new ISTK buildings) and published in 1920. The three volumes contained maps of the colonies coded to show the areas that were considered “healthy” for Europeans, along with recommended building guidelines for hospitals in the tropics. [...] "Natives" were given separate facilities [...]. The hospital at the ISTK was similarly divided according to identity. An essentializing belief in “intrinsic factors” determined by skin color, constitutive to Tropical Medicine, materialized in the building’s circulation. Potential patients were assessed in the main building to determine their next destination in the hospital. A room labeled “Farbige” (colored) - visible in both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications - shows that the hospital segregated people of color from whites. [...]

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Despite belonging to two different disciplines [medicine and architecture], both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications articulate an understanding of health [...] that is linked to concepts of identity separating white upper-class German Europeans from others. [In] Hamburg [...] recent growth of the shipping industry and overt engagement of the German Empire in colonialism brought even more distant global connections to its port. For Schumacher, Hamburg’s presence in a global network meant it needed to strengthen its local identity and economy [by purposefully seeking to showcase "traditional" northern German neo-gothic brickwork while elevating local brick industry] lest it grow too far from its roots. In the case of Tropical Medicine at the ISTK, the “tropics” seemed to act as a foil for the European identity - a constructed category through which the European identity could redescribe itself by exclusion [...].

What it meant to be sick or healthy was taken up by both medicine and architecture - [...] neither in a vacuum.

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All text above by: Carrie Bly. "Mediums of Medicine: The Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases in Hamburg". Sick Architecture series published by e-flux Architecture. November 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[demitranswolf]

I don’t know how far this will reach, but I am looking to interview people who live in Brazil for a class project based around economics and the environment. I am looking to ask about questions based around hydropower and taxes based on times of drought. If you are someone who has lived in Brazil and paid taxes on electricity and water utilities, please reach out to me! I tried contacting family members who live in Brazil, but they have unfortunately not gotten back to me.

[gringoslur]

queridos latines dejen de agarrarse del PBI de Argentina y de la dolarizacion cada vez que estén perdiendo un debate con un argentino. hablar de las copas de fútbol tiene su tono sinsentido en la mayoría de las conversaciones que le da humor a la cosa, hablar de datos y estadísticas económicas ya nos marca que perdiste.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Trump may try to push Brazil away from China and boost the far-right in the region, says analyst

Professor Barbara Motta says Brazilian diplomacy may seek normalization in its relations with the US

Although Brazil is not currently a priority country for US foreign relations, the effects of Donald Trump's electoral victory, confirmed on Wednesday (6), may be felt in the foreign policy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government. That’s the analysis of Barbara Motta, professor of International Relations at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS, in Portuguese) and coordinator of the Foreign Policy Observatory for Brazil (OPEB, in Portuguese).

“At first, the main consequence is how Brazil will manage to take a stance amid the trade war between China and the United States. For Brazil, it is important to maintain good commercial and diplomatic ties with both the United States and China, since both countries are important economic partners,” she told Brasil de Fato.

She believes that Trump will resume the policy he used in his first term, applying trade tariffs on Chinese products and pressuring allies to do the same. In a new round of Trump at the White House, Motta points out that this may be political pressure from the US on the Brazilian government.

“The United States sees Latin America as its exclusive area of influence, and Brazil is one of the major countries in the region. This could be pressure from the Trump administration on Brazil to distance the country and the regional bloc from a close commercial and diplomatic relationship with China.”

Continue reading.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Lula imposes 15% tax on multinationals in Brazil

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued a provisional decree Thursday night imposing a 15 percent minimum tax on the profits of large multinational corporations operating in Brazil. The decree takes immediate effect, but must be approved by Congress within 120 days or it will expire.

According to a statement from Brazil’s Finance Ministry, the new tax will apply to about 290 multinational groups with annual revenues exceeding EUR 750 million (USD 822 million). Of these companies, around 20 are Brazilian.

Under the rule, if a multinational company pays less than 15 percent in taxes on its profits, it will be required to make up the difference — either in Brazil or in another jurisdiction.

The ministry projects that this measure will generate an additional BRL 3.4 billion (USD 620 million) in revenue by 2026, and BRL 7.3 billion by 2027.

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil rolls out minimum tax on profits of multinational firms

Brazil's government late on Thursday published an executive order that effectively rolls out a minimum 15% tax on profits of multinational corporations, a publication in the country's official gazette showed.

Brazil's government has been seeking new sources of revenue to meet fiscal targets that include reducing its fiscal deficit to zero, while being loath to adopt broad spending cuts. It says the new move is in line with global efforts to combat tax evasion.

The executive order sets an additional levy on Brazil's social contribution tax on corporate income (CSLL) to make sure the minimum taxation stands at 15%, according to the publication.

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Submerged by flooding, Porto Alegre realizes it was unprepared: 'Everything has to be rebuilt'

Three weeks after being hit by one of the worst climate disasters in its history, which left at least 157 people dead, 88 missing and forced the evacuation of 540,000, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is still partly submerged.

After slipping on her rubber boots, Darcilla Melo Da Silva, 58, took a deep breath before she stepped through the metal gates of her house, guided by her husband, Admar, 68. The scene she had so feared to see for the past 12 days appeared before her eyes. The vegetable garden where she had planted cabbage and herbs to alleviate her severe health problems was buried under a layer of mud. The remains of a white hen lay among the tangled planks, next to her new washing machine, which had been swept into the garden by the current and had ended up crushed under a tree trunk.

The interior of her house, which took her 40 years to furnish, was even more desolate. A smell of rot was pervasive. Without any electricity, Da Silva had to discover the extent of the damage by the light from her husband's smartphone: holes in the roof, raised floor, overturned armchairs... "Everything has to be rebuilt," said the grandmother barely able to breathe.

The retired couple, who lived in the Cidade Baixa district in the west of Porto Alegre, were among the 540,188 people who were forced to evacuate their homes in early May when floodwaters engulfed two-thirds of the towns in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a hilly area on the border with Argentina and Uruguay with a population of some 11 million.

Since April 27, torrential rains have battered the region, raising the level of the Guaiba, a body of water – considered as much a river, lake or estuary – that borders the Porto Alegre metropolitan area, by several meters. On May 6, the day Darcilla Melo Da Silva and Admar evacuated their home, the water level reached 5.3 meters: the most severe flooding since 1941, when the Guaiba had risen to a height of 4.76 meters.

"This extreme event is the result of global warming" aggravated by the El Niño phenomenon, said Francisco Aquino, climatologist and head of the geography department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. As temperatures rise, "we expect them to become more frequent and intense."

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

'Hunger results from political decisions,' Lula says at G20 meeting

Lula and his minister of finance defended taxing the richest; meeting discussed launching Global Alliance against hunger

On Wednesday (24), Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) took part in the opening session of the Ministerial Meeting of the Task Force to Establish a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. The activity took place in Rio de Janeiro, in the warehouse where the Ação da Cidadania project, created by sociologist and activist Herbert de Souza, popularly known as Betinho, operates.

The Global Alliance Against Hunger is Brazil's main project at the presidency of G20, which will last until November this year, and aims to meet one of the main goals of the UN 2030 Agenda: the elimination of poverty and hunger in the world.

In a speech, President Lula emphasized the growth of food insecurity and hunger in the world after 2019 and said that hunger results from political decisions. “Hunger is the most degrading of human deprivations. It is an attack on life, an assault on freedom. As the great Brazilian social scientist Josué de Castro said, hunger is the biological expression of social evils,” he said.

“Hunger is not the result of external factors. It is, above all, the result of political choices. Today, the world produces more than enough food to eradicate [hunger]. What is missing is creating the conditions for access to food,” said the president.

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian Favelas Are Overthrowing Colonial Legacies and Carving Out a Future With… Jackfruit?!

Otávio Barros, a fifth generation resident of the small favela of Vale Encantado, located in the buffer area surrounding Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest, was elected president of the community’s residents’ association in 2005. Soon after, in 2007, he founded the Vale Encantado Cooperative, with nearly two dozen neighbors, to generate eco-friendly employment for their families. Among other activities that build on the community’s vocation for sustainability is a guided tour through the community and surrounding forest, followed by a multi-course lunch featuring their eco-gastronomy.

Barros takes visitors along paths in the forest, introducing them to plants they will be eating shortly thereafter. One that stands out is jackfruit, the world’s largest tree-borne fruit, originally from Asia and historically stigmatized in Brazil.

The jackfruit trees near the community are tall and old. In Brazil, jackfruit trees have two fruiting seasons, and fruits can weigh up to 80 pounds.

Vale Encantado’s restaurant, alongside a growing movement of other community kitchens like Babilônia’s Favela Orgânica, advocacy organizations like Mão na Jaca (Hands on Jackfruit), and favela agroforestry projects producing and selling jackfruit, like CEM, are working to challenge the stigma around jackfruit and promote it as the extremely rich food source that it is. Jackfruit, as a signature ingredient in their gastronomy, allows residents to achieve greater economic and food security.

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[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Gambling is Brazil's latest frenzy

Gambling has become the latest frenzy in Brazil, with ads flooding the media and influencers proudly flaunting their “wins” on social networks. Outlawed for so long, betting is fast becoming part of daily life for many Brazilians — but where is this trend leading?

Recent arrests of influential figures linked to money laundering schemes involving betting platforms have raised concerns that something shady may be at play. As we’ve covered here at The Brazilian Report, the scale of the country’s gambling firms is startling after such a short space of time: betting companies now account for 1 percent of Brazil’s GDP, and a staggering 63 percent of betting platform users have compromised their income due to gambling losses. This situation raises serious alarms.

Moreover, gambling doesn’t just affect personal finances — it can influence sports, politics, and even elections by altering the motivations behind these arenas. The growing issue of gambling addiction could soon evolve into a significant public health crisis, one Brazil may not be prepared to handle.

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