Brazil now new 6th largest economy... Brazil 'overtakes UK's economy' 6 March 2012 - The Brazilian economy is still booming, despite the global economic slowdown
Unless you are upgrading Kazakhstan ( coming fast) it is BRIC , not BRICK . Actually it is BRIIC to be pedantic , because Indonesia is expanding faster than my waist . It's amazing that the UK is even in the Top 20 . In " big" terms it has few to zero natural resources and is barely 2cm wide in most atlasses . Our brains , charming manner and cunning will keep us going as others stumble --- Italy , Spain and then France for starters .
Those people are fooling themselves with numbers, BRIC are following the facist footsteps, trying to control the economy at all costs, even if it means slower growth. They may surpass other countries in numbers, but that is going to be a slow and painful process. It took Estonia (socialist country before 1991) 20 years to achieve double the per capita income of Brazil in a country with little natural and little governmental "help".
There are 190million people in Brazil. There are 1.3million people in Estonia. Your comparison is irrelevant on many levels. In one thing you are correct, Brazil did not begin rapid economic growth until their fascist military dictatorship was replaced by democracy and the economy opened. Brazil has a lot of things going for it, lots of oil mineral and agricultural surpluses to export, a large population of young people, a growing manufacturing base, a rapidly growing middle class, and growing investment of surplus monies into infrastructure and education. Brazilian companies have also been able to tap into the flow of money into Brazil to finance expansion abroad, expanding markets and market share for Brazilian exports and expanding two way trade. Brazil also has its own aerospace manufacturer, Embraer, along with large auto manufacturing, steel, chemicals, computers, and consumer durable sectors. Recent large finds of deep water offshore oil are spurring technology transfers and generating huge investments in creating an indigenous offshore oil manufacturing and service sector. Brazil is having no problems in attracting technological investment and engineering talent. Brazil is to the twenty first century what the US was to the twentieth. The country is not without problems but it is a huge nation with massive resources that the rest of the world will continue to clamour for into the foreseeable future. It is up to the leaders to ensure that economic gains are more widely dispersed and more of the increases in wealth are being reinvested locally rather than taken abroad as in the past. Brazil has a big opportunity right now. If the leaders choose correctly Brazil could end up like the US, with a huge middle class driven consumer economy. If it makes the wrong choices it will never get there.
They are already way ahead of America . Their roots are founded in Socialist concerns . In gaining wealth , they also obligate themselves to the deserving and disadvantaged . As America dies , so far greater potential Sovereign States arise .
What do you want to say by: "there are 190million people in Brazil. There are 1.3million people in Estonia." Gorvenments of countries with big populations should be more statist? Just like the old soviet union? That makes no sense. Brazil will never get there, it is that mentality that holds it back, waiting for a leader to fix everything (all leaders actually manage to hinder everything with taxes, inflation and protectionism).
That comment reminds me of the americans who went to the old soviet union and went back saying: That country is perfect, every other nation should follow its footsteps.
An interesting opinion because the two are non comparable in about every possible way . Have you got any more amazing recollections about stupid Americans ? That would make my day .
The government of Brazil must work to improve the lives of all its people. Brazil, along with most nations in South America, has a long experience with the economic and political experiments of supposed experts applying their theoretical prescriptions and came out of every one of them worse than it went in. It was only when a group of pragmatic local economists not beholden to any particular economic or social theory but to the facts were brought into the government, crunched the numbers, looked at the history of policy decisions in other nations, an recommended what the government should do that the economy began to take off. There was a lot of resistance. It took a strong leader to make it happen. Now no one wants it to go back the the old days. Things are working, life is getting better for everyone. There is no desire to abandon the present path. There is certainly no appetite for adopting any of the crackpot unworkable economic paths that Brazil has experienced in the past, like yours. One size does not fit all. Estonian economics are not applicable to a nation like Brazil. To think they are is a denial of reality
This is drivel. Its not possible to come out with economic policy without reference to economic theory. One can be pluralist and one can accept the need to combine political economic schools of thought to derive practical solutions, but your account suggests that Brazilians have invented "accountancy history". You might not understand their development, but please don't invent convenient blurb
Brazil has had, long before the military dictatorship screwed stuff up even more (thanks to the keynesians, btw), the Vargas Era. Vargas was a president (a popular facist dictator, to be more precise) who tried to do all that the current goverment tries to do, needless to say he didn't take us anywhere, nor did any of the statists who came before him. I think it is safe to say that we "tried everything", people just fail to acknowledge that, and blame corruption instead for everything. ( I also believe that the bigger population a country has, the easier it is for it to get stuck with corrupt governments, thus limiting government in big countries is even more crucial to them ) We have a political leftist culture that even most american leftists would consider "too leftist", and China has an even more leftist culture. That is basically the reason I think the BRICs nations will never get its citizens (in general, of course there are many people who live well in those countries) to enjoy a quality of life as good as most first world countries (the detail here is that, even if living standards drop everywhere due to lack of resourses or something, they will still be worse in leftist countries).
A lot of really useful and practical economics can be done sans the wholly impractical and mostly insane theoretical underpinnings of the vast majority of economics. I never suggested that the Brazilians invented anything except adopted a way for them to understand the economy of Brazil and make useful and practical policy suggestions that, when implemented bring about the desired result more often and with fewer undesirable side effects than the overly simplistic and often disastrous adherence to broad theory that has so plagued Brazil in the past. It is interesting to me that you seem to feel that economic theorizing in general needs to be defended to the point where you feel the need to personally insult me when pretty much every practical application of every economic theory has wrought such serial calamity to the people of the world. The world would be far better off if economists just admitted that they have no clue how the economy operates and all their theories are just useless drivel. Then perhaps they could find some more useful things to do with their data than use it to waste everyone's time defending or attacking one useless and impractically insane theory or another and trying to get them implemented though demented policy.
Even the most unrealistic models (perfect competition springs to mind) have been useful for the construction of policy. There's no point in suggesting otherwise. And I didn't personally insult you. I said your comment was drivel. It clearly was
It is BRICS now. South Africa was added. They had been courting Mexico at one point, not sure if that is still in the works. In conjunction with Chinas SEZs and their growth, (acknowledging Albert, the String of Pearls)...well..there is a reason they call it The New Game.
