Hoje é Dia de Combate à Desigualdade

Querido diário:

Hoje é o dia da manifestação:

ESQUINA DEMOCRÁTICA

DE PORTO ALEGRE

(Confluência da Av. Borges com Rua da Praia)

17 horas

Traga sua Bandeira

Pinte a sua Cara

Traga suas Origens

Minha bandeira, minha cara e minhas origens prendem-se à luta contra a desigualdade, pois esta parece-me ser a causa de todos os males. Quer falar de corrupção? Basta tornar o sistema judiciário (policiais, MP e juízes) mais eficiente. Roubo de merendas, o mesmo. Roubo de bolsa de moça? Mais repressão para o réprobo e mais educação, para dar-lhe a opção de não escolher o caminho do crime como profissão. E que a turma faria com seus rendimentos? O desempregado que passa a ganhar uma fração do imposto de renda descontado do desembargados passará a custear o curso de violino de sua talentosa filha. O lixeiro que teve seu emprego público (serviços industriais de utilidade pública) formalizado pela prefeitura de sua cidade) voltará a usar os serviços de educação e saúde, contratará serviços de uma astróloga que enviará o filho a passear em Brasília por uma agência de viagens em que a operadora voltará a frequentar um instituto de beleza, cuja dona vai fazer um livro de poesias cuja gráfica tem um dono que trocará de carro, empregando um metalúrgico que... chegará à presidência da república.

Em compensação, escrevi isto no Facebook de Maria Lúcia Sampaio (a Rua Sofia Veloso, em 'L', é uma homenagem ao nome dela):

.1. O nível de desigualdade na distribuição da renda no Brasil é escandaloso. .2. O imposto de renda progressivo sobre a pessoa física é o instrumento (passivo, o ativo é o gasto público regressivo) adequado a minimizar a desigualdade. .3. Não existe 'bitributação', ou seja, o imposto de renda arrecadado no estado não se transfere à união. .4. Mas nunca vi nenhum governador falando nesta forma de minimizar as escandalosas diferenças de remunerações entre os três poderes (ou apenas dois contra um, pois judiciários e legislativos têm desabotinadas benesses).

E, para concluir o dia de glória, tenho um trecho do blog de Michael Roberts, em publicação de 14/maio/2014 (aqui), defendendo a sociedade igualitária:

Now he is telling us that an ‘economy’ needs some inequality to work.  Really? Do we need ‘inequality’ to provide ‘incentives’ for people to ‘work hard and innovate? Reich is talking about inequality of income here, I suppose. But think of this.

A doctor in the US or the UK earns probably at least five or six times the income of a garbage collector. Most garbage collectors do a sterling and steady job clearing our rubbish in the early mornings and street collectors all day long without screaming that they need a salary like a doctor before they would do it. They would like one, I’m sure, but if garbage collectors got the same income as a doctor, would that mean doctors would stop doctoring? Maybe some would switch to garbage collection and get up at 5am and work in mucky conditions in all weathers until early afternoon rather and look at people’s bodies, check scans, do operations and work night shifts in hospitals. But most would not. Doctors become doctors because on the whole they want to do it and think they are doing something useful. Of course, not all people do it for that reason. But I doubt that the inequality of income between doctors and garbage collectors is necessary for either to do their jobs.

But what about the incentive to innovate? Surely, without the prospect of making huge gains or profits from an invention or a new piece of technology or a new drug, these things would not be discovered or developed? Well, the evidence is the opposite. Most great inventions did not benefit the direct inventor, but only the capitalist company that developed the invention. And most great advances in technology, social welfare, productivity and health were found and developed by state funding. Take the worldwide web or the internet: the products of state funding of ‘defence’ and the space race.

But what about Apple, Microsoft etc and the great entrepreneurs of the recent hi-tech revolution? Surely, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc would not have applied their unique skills without the ‘incentive’ of eventually making billions? Well, a recent study by Mariana Mazzucato shows it has been the state that has sparked all that ‘innovation’. She comments “the real story behind Silicon Valley (at the centre of my new book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking private vs. public sector myths ) is not the story of the state getting out of the way so that risk-taking venture capitalists – and garage tinkerers – could do their thing. From the internet to nanotech, most of the fundamental advances – in both basic research but also downstream commercialisation – were funded by government, with businesses moving into the game only once the returns were in clear sight. All the radical technologies behind the iPhone were government-funded: the internet, GPS, touchscreen display, and even the voice-activated Siri personal assistant.”

She goes on: “Apple initially received $500,000 from the Small Business Investment Corporation, a public financing arm of the government. Likewise, Compaq and Intel received early-stage grants, not from venture capital, but via public capital through the Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR). As venture capital has become increasingly short-termist, SBIR loans and grants have had to increase their role in early-stage seed financing the US Department of Health and the Department of Energy. Indeed, it turns out that 75 per cent of the most innovative drugs owe their funding not to pharmaceutical giants or to venture capital but to that of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH has, over the past decade, invested $600 billion in the biotech-pharma knowledge base; $32 billion in 2012 alone. Although venture capital entered the biotech industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, all the heavy investments in this sector occurred in the 1950s through to the 1970s.”

DdAB
P.S. Se quiseres que eu traduza, sinaliza nos comentários do blog e então eu o farei.