WORLD WORLDWIDE SOUTH AMERICA BRAZIL - news journal UPDATE - (en) Brazil, UNIPA, Causa do Povo #82 - The PT Illusion: More Austerity (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In 2023, the Lula-Alckmin government (PT-PSB) approved the new fiscal

framework, called the Sustainable Fiscal Regime (RFS), replacing the
Temer Government's new spending ceiling, and a "Tax Reform. Both
measures maintained the Brazilian system of colonial capitalist
exploitation and domination, in which capitalists, politicians, judges
and their families always win. In the case of the RFS, it favors
privatizations and large capitalist groups, hindering state investment
in sectors such as Health, Education, Environment and Infrastructure,
and maintained the core of the tax payment system, which is exemplary
for taking money from the most impoverished workers. And transfer to the
Brazilian ruling class, a real robbery of the people.

The management structure of the Brazilian economy is still under the
aegis of the developers of the Real Plan, privileging the financial
sector and contingency the state budget for public investments. Despite
having relatively low inflation, it is maintained with interest rates in
the economy that favor the financial sector of the capitalist economy,
contingent salaries and state investment and little economic growth in
line with the capitalist system itself. Consequently, this macroeconomic
arrangement of the Brazilian economy also strengthened the agribusiness
bourgeoisie, to the extent that the sector's high exports help in the
trade balance and in the formation of primary surpluses that are all
directed to the capitalists, and not to improving health and education,
for example.

The RFS was sanctioned with vetoes by President Lula on August 30, 2023,
becoming Complementary Law No. 200. From an economic point of view, it
is the financial bourgeoisie that determined the RFS, worsening in
certain aspects the proposal of Michel Temer, from new Spending Ceiling.
Thus maintaining the fiscalist character, which contingent on state
investment, of the Brazilian State's own economic management, a pattern
that has been maintained since the Collor government. In practice, the
RFS already restricts the budget by limiting real spending growth to
1.7%. Therefore, there is no increase on the horizon for the
Bolsa-Família program, much less salary for a wide range of workers in
the state sector, as the negotiation table with the government already
demonstrates. Even for the much talked about New Growth Acceleration
Program (New PAC) resources are scarce.

This new fiscal regime seeks to increase private investment, and it is
no coincidence that privatizations and concessions continue under the
current government, such as prisons and national parks. If, on the one
hand, the victory of the coalition led by Lula's PT means the
strengthening of the Bourgeois State in the midst of the crisis of the
bourgeois Republic of 1988, the new fiscal regime is the consolidation
of the neoliberal fiscal organization, since in order for there to be
economic growth Brazilian capitalism would require much more private
investment.

We have a new government that has served to give more legitimacy to the
bourgeois order that massacres the people. If, on the one hand, any and
all Budget expenses allocated to health, education, infrastructure and
the environment are restricted by the new fiscal regime, as has been the
case since the FHC government, this does not happen in relation to the
payment of interest on the debt; in 2023 alone there were more than 700
billion in interest on public debt

For the State and in particular the Republic of 1988, it is no
coincidence that it works with sectors of the Judiciary, mainly the
Federal Supreme Court (STF), to maintain national order. Meanwhile,
parliament works more oiled than ever in its physiology, increasing its
purchase price with an increase in resources from the federal budget for
parliamentarians to continue carrying out their little politics:
clientelism and buying votes.

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It is also no coincidence that Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad,
(PT) has defended the end of the constitutional floors for health and
education, within the logic of contingency of resources in accordance
with the austerity policy.

The system of exploitation and domination is increasingly perfected. If
the new tax regime is entirely based on the logic of private investment
with restrictions on state spending, even for health, education and the
environment, the tax reform maintains its unfair and unequal character.

The ongoing tax reform ultimately aimed to simplify the system, without
touching its structure. In other words, the prey on the people continues
to favor the powerful. The main objective of simplifying taxes is to
relieve companies and transfer all these indirect taxes to the working
class as a whole. Just like the labor reform whose main objective was to
reduce companies' legal costs, this time it is the administrative and
tax part. The adoption of the new tax regime did not change the
concentration of indirect taxes, on consumption, which affect the most
impoverished workers.

The reform did not change income tax taxation, where workers with
salaries of 4664 pay a rate of 27.5%, the same as a bank director with a
salary of one million a month. Not to mention that the ruling class
earns its income in profits and dividends that are tax-free. According
to the Federal Revenue itself, the lower a Brazilian's income is, the
more taxed it is. Those who earn between 3 and 5 salaries have their
income taxed at up to 70%, however those who earn more than 300 thousand
monthly have only 30% of their taxable income. Not to mention that large
corporations and capitalists operate from tax havens, taxing much less
on their sales, like the agribusiness sector itself.

  The New Fiscal Regime and Tax Reform do not improve the lives of the
working class in any way. They are within the neoliberal economic policy
of Austerity that has marked the last three decades. This time, these
changes are carried out by a government that seeks, together with the
judiciary, mainly the STF, to guarantee the Dead Republic of 1988,
maintaining the capitalist-bourgeois order, and thereby strengthening
the reaction against the working class. Workers and the people of the
countryside and forest need to organize autonomously and break with the
illusions of PTism and parliamentary legalism. Only a Social Revolution
is capable of putting an end to the regime of exploitation and
domination and for this to happen it is necessary to break what prevents
it from flourishing.

https://uniaoanarquista.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/01.-cdp-82-online.pdf
https://uniaoanarquista.wordpress.com/2024/06/05/a-ilusao-petista-mais-austeridade/
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