NIVALDO CORDEIRO: um espectador engajado

UNLIMITED LIES

July, 01, 2004

If there’s a contemporary hero, in the exact meaning of the word contained in the Aurélio Dictionary, which is, “exceptional man due to his deeds of warrior, his value or his magnanimity”, such a man was Ronald Reagan. He’d have been the greatest of all north-americans of the twentieth century maybe, for have beaten the sovietic communism, for have beaten (at least for some time) the communism within his borders, for have rescued the traditional values, for have put right what was out of place. In a few years he dared to fix what was spoiled. He was a great man.

And because I know that, the reading of the article written by João Paulo (“The two deaths of Reagan”), published on June, 12, in the newspaper O ESTADO DE MINAS, caused me a profound displeasure. The author – worth recalling – is the editor of a section called Cultura in the same newspaper.. Hence, I already knew that he was a first-rate Gramscian agent since according to the Left such a position is not allowed to be occupied by anyone from outside of its array. To those who don’t know, the sole duty of a Gramscian agent is to plant lies and phony news that favor the socialist cause, preferentially by defaming Capitalism, Christianity and the other religions and everything else recognized as traditional values. They don’t have any limit in this shameful job and even avail themselves of talking idly of the dead. Here the victim was former president Ronald Reagan, by daring to show extreme disdain towards him, the typical contempt of the defeated and spiteful.

In the text, the author talks about the Starwars Program, the break-off of social programs, the neo-liberalism but no word on the defeat of the Soviet empire, after all, for him the real socialism wasn’t socialism. And he affirms: Ronald Reagan assisted in taking away from this world some of the compassion that is at the basis of man’s biggest devices in terms of politics: capitalism and socialism. Something more stupid than that is the folly he intends to ascribe to the great man he attempts to defame.

Let’s take it in parts. The Starwars Program was essential to drown economically the Soviets, consequently demonstrating the false economic grounds and the edifice of lies upon which the alleged “real socialism” was constituted. It may have been the greatest strategic plan of Reagan’s government, who knew of its outcomes for the foes of Western civilization. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent separation of the so-called popular republics of the soviet constelation were direct consequences of that strategic positioning. We can only spot here the statesman’s genius, which pacified the world, reducing the chances of a nuclear holocaust and virtually hemming in the insurgencies sponsored by the soviets throughout the world. The humankind has to confer honours on someone who accomplished a feat of that scope, but what expect of a Gramscian agent but the denial of good, in that case, the Greater Good?

The term ‘neo-liberalism’ has entered the jargon of leftist satanization because during the 80’s it was observed the gradual defeat of their political follies, whether regarding the Democratic Party or its European kindred. Reagan assumed the power among high inflation, military discredit after the vexations of Carter in Iran, the recession and the consequences that all these blunders caused to U.S.A. and to the world as a whole. He did rescue the ideas of brilliant economists like Milton Friedman, von Mises and Hayek among others, putting everything in its right place. The negative sense attributed by the ominous João Paulo to the term ought to be read with changed signs: it’s the rescue of good politics, of the good management of the State, of reason, of separation between what ought to be public and what ought to be private. Rigorously, the prefix should be dismissed, once Right-oriented ideas have never changed, its creators never tried to recreate reality, only tried to understand it. They understood the State and have always known that this monster, if allowed to grow, threatens liberty and prosperity of everyone. Yet, João Paulo, blinded by ideology and on behalf of socialism’s nihilist cause, attempts to hand down the idea that neo-liberalism is evil. It is not. Liberalism’s resurrection, after decades of collectivist propaganda all over the world, saved humanity from chaos.

Yes, Reagan reduced supposed social programs and weakened many of the foolishnesses that his democrat predecessors had made. But could it be different? There can be no rights for a few unless you create duties for the many, by practicing brazen unfairness and rendering men and women hostages of the state monthly allowance, turning them at last into grown children. In parallel, the enlargement of the State sacrifices economic development capacity. Regretfully, Reagan´s work, on that point, did not reach the extent it could have done. There´s still a lot to do. Set tramps to work is a tough task nowadays and it is regarded as bad politics. For the liar disciples of Gramsci, good becomes evil and beggars turn into virtuous people.

Who invented the meaning of compassion, it´s good to say, was neither capitalism nor socialism, but the religions. In the Western, the Judeo-Christian tradition holds charity as its chief mark. Capitalism is just a economic arrangement born out of the principles of our tradition, and because of that it arose in Christian societies spontaneously. Socialism has never guided itself for compassion, but for lie, tyranny and violence. Socialism is the rebirth of slavery wherever it was implanted and, of course, the imposition of artificial misery where otherwise abundance could exist. Socialism is the true western trash. It served only for a bunch of bold adventurers to take over the State power and make the nefarious use of it as described in History books. The real socialism is the true socialism.

In short, it is this kind of people that poisons Brazilian readers´ minds everyday, through newspapers, magazines, TV, radios and mass media vehicles. It is necessary that we unmask these contumacious liars. If it depends on me, they will be unmasked.

DISCUSSING THE WAGES

May, 25, 2004

To discuss the value of the minimum wage and the distribution of the social product between diferent economic agents and the government is always an arduous job. Many times the debaters bring to discussion a distributive drive and an activism that cloud rationality. The most awarded scholars often slip, whether in argumentation, or in language. They are not free from the heart-felt populist appeal

I mention here two articles published today in the press, one from Roberto Mangabeira Unger ("Wage Minimalism"), in Folha de São Paulo, and another from José Pastore ("Informality suffocates minimum wage"), in Estadão (TN: Estadão and Folha de Sao Paulo are well-known Brazilian newspapers). We can say that these are two examples of what is best in academic terms in Brazil, what shows how decadent the art of thinking in our society is.

Unger is known as a leftist and aspirant to a political carrier. Of the two of them, he is the one who believes less in the forces of market and celebrates more the government´s intervention. That is the only way we will understand the folowing sentence: “ It is necessary to increase the income of the Brazilian people at the same time that we prevent that the wages’ growth is kept concentrated in the most capitalized sectors of economy. Growth that is not based on these two lines is growth that lacks deepening of our market and valorization of our worker”. Now, the first lesson in a good economics manual is that wages are set by the market. The one who values the worker is himself and whoever wants to hire him. The larger his productivity the larger his income, and it is reciprocal.

His antimarket smalltalk continues: “ No big country of average income (except for Mexico) gives work such a small part of the national income). The only link to be allowed in Brazil is between minimum wage and minimum retirement. Nobody tolerates such extreme disparities for the workers”. Note that at this time he abandons the wage levels issue and approaches the income distribution issue, with no words whatsoever about the exorbitant tax load, be it over work (industries payroll), be it over the wage itself and over expenditure. How can we discuss, nowadays in Brazil, the income distribution without bringing up the tax issue? Only someone soaked in ill intentions could do that. In Unger’s and in his sectarians’ heads revenues can be arbitrarily rated, totally ignoring the efforts made to produce them and the productivity of the work, independent of the taxes, like it comes out of nowhere.

It is more than clear that someone working in export agriculture tends to earn a lot more than someone who works in subsistence agriculture, because of the abyss that exists between both activities in productivity, to give an obvious example. It is impossible to transfer wealth from one to the other without a great deal of violence.

Unger closes his article supporting the dettachment of the minimum wage from the retirement funds but, in contradiction, changes back his argument, supporting that “The only link to be allowed is between minimum wage and minimum retirement”. It is a mad gringo’s samba (TN: expression that in Portuguese means a huge mess). He is able to say something and take it back in the same sentence.

Even being less leftist, José Pastore walks down the same road, when he says that “ the government did not approve a 'human minimum wage' because of the hole this would put in the Social Security accounts”. What does “human minimum wage” mean? Nothing, because there is not an equivalent animal or vegetable or even mineral minimun wage. In fact, the minimun wage should be considered a maximum, due to the very low productivitie of those who earn it, like the many public workers in the city halls spreaded over Brazil. It can also be considered a maximum because these people would have no condition of earning the same amount in any alternative job in the nearby area.

“Human” wage is the one that is practiced by the market, nothing more. Anything outside of that is unhuman, because if it is larger, it is subsidy, if it is samaller, theft.

When Pastore says that the dettachment of the minimum wage from Social Security is “a devastating solution” we can see the inversion of reality that overwhelms the author. What is devastating is the simple existence of an arbitrary minimum wage, whatever its value is. Its rating is a great violence against the market, causing an increase in unemployment and, if it does not, in the estabilishment of informal work relationships.

Pastore makes a rethorical argumentation when he says that “If the beneficiary of the Social Security has to live nowadays with less than US$ 1,50 per day, what do these people that long for the dettachment want? Kill them so that they do not upset the public accounts?” The fact that the individual has an income from Social Security does not mean that he lives exclusivelly on that income. What we see in this Country is that most people that retire do not stop working, eihter because they do it when they are too young, or because they have family heritage, or, yet, because the children end up supporting the parents.

The solution proposed by Pastore is to face the informal jobs problem. But how? Informal workers only stay in this condition for lack of options. They are either too poor, clandestins trying to survive, as the street vendors, or those that use the possibility of starting companies to become pseudo-rentists, receiving dividends; and that is wage with a different name. Actually, they are not even informal workers, because they are in unison with the law.

To eliminate informal jobs is to eliminate the last breath of those who have not drowned yet in the sea of unenployment. The fake compassion of the author is shown in the following sentence: “ Informal jobs are a plague that extinguishe the possibility of helping the poor”. It is the exact opposite. Without informal jobs unenployment would mean the impossibility of these people to biologically continue to exist. We would have African starvation in Sao Paulo. Informal jobs is an objective help to the poor; only that they give it to themselves ignoring the Government, the intelectuals the fake merciful.