The shameless defense of plutocracy – 09/07/2023 – André Roncaglia

The article “Being rich is not a sin”, published last Saturday (2) in Sheet, sought to rehabilitate the image of the super-rich in public opinion. Committing economic conceptual errors (difference between income and wealth) and biblical errors (camels passing through needles…), the text brought an indigestible apology for plutocracy.

More important than the content of the text is its motivation: the provision of tax equality between exclusive funds and the rest of investment funds. Around 3,000 people invest at least R$10 million in these domestic versions of offshore tax havens. Together, these heroes without cover park R$966 billion in these funds, exempt from any tax, in contrast to the rest of fund investors, taxed semi-annually (come-quotas).

For millennia, tax immunity has been a symbol of social distinction. Mere tax equality is seen as oppression, as it lowers the social status of this wealthy minority (and self-exiled abroad): not because they will lose money (that won’t happen, believe me!), but because their privileges will be reduced — from the Latin, “privus” (private) and “lex” (law). It’s a question of identity.

The rhetoric of services provided to society, dressed as meritocracy, seeks to rationalize and justify the shameless corporatism of the plutocracy. This is a global trend.

Consultation with Google’s Ngram application shows the replacement of the term plutocracy in English-language books from 1958 onwards, when the term meritocracy was created by British sociologist Michael Young (“The Rise of Meritocracy”), to express the advancement of agendas of equal opportunities and anti-discrimination.

Ironically, the spread of meritocratic belief has provided a moral shield for the concentration of economic and political power in the super-rich. For example, the CPI for the Americanas fraud did not call those responsible to testify and ended up without finding any culprits. After all, the Lemann-Telles-Sicupira trio (from 3G Capital) has a free pass to accumulate wealth at the expense of good corporate governance (the trio became R$6 billion rich while ruining Lojas Americanas).

When dealing with the disappearance of the middle class in the USA (“The vanishing middle class”), Peter Temin showed how meritocratic belief normalizes inequality, blocking the democratization of opportunities in the market economy. Michael Sandel exposes how “The Tyranny of Merit” spreads social resentments that threaten liberal democracies in the West. Meritocracy is dystopia!

In a 2019 article, Jonathan Mijs, from the London School of Economics, highlighted the “inequality paradox”: socioeconomic inequality increases citizens’ tolerance to its effects. In developed countries, the socioeconomic situation is mostly attributed to personal decisions, not to structural inequalities (such as tax and judicial immunities for the richest).

Social stratification prevents people from directly experiencing inequality. In highly stratified countries, individuals perceive less income inequality in their workplace, neighborhoods and social networks. Segregation shapes the understanding of society from a position of social isolation. Invisible injustice does not cause outrage.

Inequality internalizes meritocratic belief and weakens effective democracy. In Brazil, the super-rich defend education to overcome inequalities, but refuse to permanently finance public education (the exemption from profits and dividends is linked to the defense of charging tuition fees at public universities). They create highly profitable educational boxes, reproducing the segregation that renews the social status of their heirs.

Evoking Cazuza: the fight for tax justice reveals “this poor party that men organized to convince us to pay without seeing” for the privileges of a few.

“Brazil… show your face.”

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.