The Helots Revolt

Brazil's Woes Are The Wages Of Socialism

Brazil's rulers have been taken aback by the millions of countrymen surging up against them, venting their fury. What we have here is a fresh example of why socialism fails.

Up until now, a million Brazilians in the streets usually had something to do with a soccer match or, perhaps, a samba festival.

This time, it wasn't about festivities.

What started as a protest against a 9-cent fare hike on public transport fireballed into a gigantic public protest against political corruption, high taxes and lousy public services — and the government itself.

Protesters stormed state legislatures and set at least one on fire. The capital was stormed as well, and President Dilma Rousseff canceled her trip to Japan to call an emergency meeting with her Cabinet.

The New York Times reported that Brazil's leftist ruling Workers Party — full of 1960s-era guerrillas, community organizers, academics and radicals — "finds itself perplexed by the revolt in its midst."

After all, hadn't they been good socialists, shoveling pork to the poor, protecting local industries from foreign "predators," employing bureaucrats and taxing "the rich"? Yes, they did, and the result is a nation awash in corruption, angry at special interests, poorer from protectionism and beset by high taxes.

Now the people are marching. And the Workers' Party (PT) philosophy of rule by special interests is at least one reason why.

Brazil's rulers have been widely praised by everyone from Bill Clinton to Hugo Chavez for their handouts to the poor, in the name of "social justice." But they have done very little to create opportunity to enable poor people to get off handouts and earn a living.

What's more, they've forced others to pay for it and live with its bad effects, leaving all sides pretty angry.

"The policy of (former President) Lula (da Silva) and Dilma (both PT) focused on income transfer through social programs, but did not include the middle class, so they have taken to the streets," e-mailed Henrique Sartori, a free-market professor at the Universidade Federal de Grande Dourados in Dourados, Brazil. "All of this is happening as economic policy does not cover most Brazilians, while inflation returns, and high taxes and state intervention in the economy increase."

Brazil's rulers have adopted the poor as their constituency, but have bought off big business and public employees too — creating a web of powerful interests who benefit from its rule. Those on the outside pay for it all.

Worse, the left-leaning regime's protectionism hurts consumers in the name of economic nationalism.

A recent International Chamber of Commerce study ranked Brazil dead-last among the Group of 20 nations in terms of having an open economy, meaning protectionism is the rule of the day. Keeping foreign competitors out has made life easier for Brazil's oligarchs — but it's made life miserable for Brazil's consumers, who must deal with higher prices and fewer choices.

It also hurts Brazil's entrepreneurs, who can't get the investment and capital equipment they need.

"I talk to a lot of Brazilian business-people and their complaints are pretty uniform: high taxes, shoddy services, restrictions on trade, crime," wrote one Miami attorney who does business in Brazil on Facebook. "If they could only do one thing, they really need to embrace free trade, and drop restrictions on imports."

While special interests benefit from the carrots of socialism, the broader society gets the stick.

"We work four months of the year just to pay taxes and we get nothing in return," a protester told the New York Times recently.

They also deal with 6.5% inflation, police brutality, shoddy teachers and hospital unions, and rafts of regulations and bureaucrats.

All of this is not a bug, but a feature of socialism — a socialism by so-called experts. And just like Spartan aristocrats more than 2,000 years ago, Brazil's rulers now watch, dumbfounded, as the helots revolt.