Matt Drudge has been gleefully editorializing about the Brazil protests by suggesting -- through deceptive labeling of article links -- that they are against 'big government'. He could not be more wrong. Brazilians are not saying that they want less big government, or even expressing angst about the size of their government -- they are saying they want good government.
Brazil's boosters -- particularly in the foreign media -- like to praise the country for 'lifting 40 million Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class' and for its 'innovative' anti-poverty programs, such as participatory budgeting, conditional cash transfers, and nutrition schemes. Nevertheless, life in Brazil is still really hard -- for anyone but the super rich.
The poor, of course, suffer in violent favelas (i.e. slums) with prodigious petty crime, unemployment, drugs, violence, and unreliable infrastructure and public services. It's not the poor, though, that are engaging in these protests. The poor, in general, are too busy surviving -- working three jobs, spending all day on the streets selling trinkets for a pittance, taking care of children without support from society -- in order to find time to protest in the streets all night long. In many respects, as well, one could submit -- risking offense with the words to follow -- that the poor don't really understand what they're missing -- this is why Brazil's infamous Paulo Freire argued that consciousness-raising is a key component of education for the poor and dispossessed. The so-called 'middle class' Brazilians, however, have a good idea of how they're getting screwed.
On balance, Brazil is a really, really, reallyexpensive place to live. Nobody in Brazil is paying $50 for a microwave at Wal-Mart or Target; they're paying $175. Nobody in Brazil is paying $10 for a MegaBus ride between Rio and Sao Paulo, they're paying $50. No 'middle class' individual in Brazil is sending their kids to the woefully under-resourced -- even by sad US standards -- public schools; they're sending their kids to private schools that suck tuition dollars out of their pockets even as they pay taxes -- on everything -- that are some of the highest in the world.
Brazil's protests are about middle class, and particularly young, moderately-affluent Brazilians, realizing that the system really is stacked in favor of the 1% -- those super-rich elites who think nothing of flying from Rio to Miami to buy iPhones, baby clothes, and relax on South Beach.
The protestors are saying, in a nutshell, that they want 'value for money' from their tax dollars. They want a functioning universal public health system (Brazil basically has a woefully-underfunded version of the UK's NHS) that doesn't require the purchase of private health insurance to avoid, schools to which they can actually send their children for free, and competent police services that don't force them to live behind tall walls and locked gates. And, yes, too, Brazilians are saying that it's immoral for the country to spend billions on giant futbol stadiums in isolated places like Amazonia's Manaus when there are children dying of hunger and millions of Brazilians living in shacks without electricity and running water.
What is the relevance for the United States? It's largely an issue of framing. Brazilians are telling their government that they want their tax dollars to actually pay for services that benefit them. That they want their government to be responsible for providing a basic level of social goods, including education, health, and transport. Brazilians are articulating -- through their protests -- a vision for a big, powerful country that is not only an economic superpower, but also a social policy superpower. They are saying that political economy is not a zero-sum game, and that wealthy countries are more than capable of balancing the demands of promoting economic growth with ensuring broader social and human wellbeing. And they are saying that doing so will require a new kind of transformational leadership that has been absent for too long in their country. In the United States, we often hear that the choice is between good-small-government or bad-big-government -- to borrow from erudite travel writer Rick Steves -- but we never seem to hear from those expressing a vision for good-big-government, or if 'big' is too scary a word, good-active-government. Brazilians are showing us, if you listen closely to their shouts, a vision for good-big-government; dare I say the necessity of good-big-government in a large, diverse country with high inequality, poverty, and unmet human needs.
Now, of course, these things don't happen overnight. But, the reality is that in a democracy controlled by oligarchs -- how, I believe, it would be fair to characterize both Brazil and the United States -- unless you put millions of people in the street (think of what it took to achieve civil and voting rights for blacks in America) change is not going to happen. It's that simple. Realism, folks.
Brazil and the US share a surprising amount in common -- from wealth to political might to a tragic history of slavery -- and it just might be that Brazil's protestors are, here and now, articulating a broad vision not only for what must be done to save their own country, but also what must be done to save our own.
Obrigado, Brazil.