Brazil's social miracle turns poor into consumers

[ocpagu]

For decades, Brazil's poor had little else to cling to than their meager possessions and scant hopes for a better future. But a government program now is helping lift tens of millions in dire need out of poverty, in the process creating a vast new Brazilian consuming class.

"I can buy things with that money: clothes, shoes, I pay for services, and the best thing: I was able to buy roof tiles, and put a proper roof on my home," Maria Alves, 45, an illiterate mother of six, one of Brazil's newly-enabled consumers, told AFP.

There are 13 million families in poverty now receiving a government subsidy in Brazil, Latin America's emerging economic and political giant, in what many studies call a huge leftist government success story. The Family Basics subsidy, as the program is called, is geared toward Brazilians whose income is between 39-78 dollars per person, providing an average subsidy of 75 dollars -- perhaps a bit more, depending on the number of children in the home.

With 190 million people in a sprawling, continent-sized country, Brazil boasts that it was able to lift out of poverty 30 million people during the 2003-2010 government of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/brazils-social-miracle-turns-poor-consumers-103548560.html

[UnrepentantLiberal]

1. Love what they've done in Brazil!

[Meshuga]

2. One thing that worries me about Brazil is the lack of investment on education

Brazil needs to invest heavily in providing good education so its people can compete for good paying jobs and that is not being done at the moment.

Brazil has been growing since the 1990's with policies of Cardoso, Lula, and Rousseff but the current government needs to treat education as an economic issue so they can sustain the current growth.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

3. Education is always a good idea.