4 ms·

I'm from Brazil and Brazil is one of the most regulated places on Earth regarding labor laws and it costs the country a lot of productivity. You shouldn't assum

I'm from Brazil and Brazil is one of the most regulated places on Earth regarding labor laws and it costs the country a lot of productivity. You shouldn't assume that every country is like the average European country and thus what's good for Europeans will be good for the rest of the world.

sgt 6y ago
Exactly my thoughts as well. I think we shouldn't be so quick to pass judgement on decisions made in Brazil without hearing the various points of views. I get the impression is that there's a lot of bureaucracy and internal tension in Brazil. Is this getting at all better over time, or is it spiraling out of control?
- pcstl 6y ago
  Spiraling out of control and accelerating. Brazil is dominated by very powerful interest groups, some of them corporate, some of them unions, which lobby for laws mostly in order to ensure they keep their power. The unions keep wanting stronger labor laws, but these tend to apply in practice only to high-class workers in very unionized professions, while everyone else is lucky to even get a job at all, because the obligations our labor laws create are so insane that most smaller employers need to use legal loopholes just to be able to pay the bills at the end of the month (one of the most common ones is asking workers to open a personal company and paying their company for "services rendered" instead of the worker - labor courts hate this, but they know if they closed the loophole half of the country would be out of a job the next week) The corporations keep trying to make labor laws weaker, but they tend to do so in ways that screw over the lower-class workers while the high-class, unionized workers are able to maintain most of their privileges. It's a terrible situation. To make it worse, our legislative representatives and a large part of the electorate are very much infatuated with the (false) idea that our labor laws actually "protect" all workers, which makes it very hard to reform them. They are kind of a sacred cow to a lot of Brazilians. I don't see it getting better any time soon. (I'm a US-raised Brazilian who currently lives in Brazil, by the way)
  - rafaelvasco 6y ago
    As a Brazilian I agree completely. You see, a story told several times is a very powerful thing. And Brazilian people have been told such a story by our government for so long that people not only don't realize how broken the system is, but they fight to protect it. To quote the best movie ever made: "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

sgt 6y ago

Exactly my thoughts as well. I think we shouldn't be so quick to pass judgement on decisions made in Brazil without hearing the various points of views. I get the impression is that there's a lot of bureaucracy and internal tension in Brazil. Is this getting at all better over time, or is it spiraling out of control?

pcstl 6y ago
Spiraling out of control and accelerating. Brazil is dominated by very powerful interest groups, some of them corporate, some of them unions, which lobby for laws mostly in order to ensure they keep their power. The unions keep wanting stronger labor laws, but these tend to apply in practice only to high-class workers in very unionized professions, while everyone else is lucky to even get a job at all, because the obligations our labor laws create are so insane that most smaller employers need to use legal loopholes just to be able to pay the bills at the end of the month (one of the most common ones is asking workers to open a personal company and paying their company for "services rendered" instead of the worker - labor courts hate this, but they know if they closed the loophole half of the country would be out of a job the next week) The corporations keep trying to make labor laws weaker, but they tend to do so in ways that screw over the lower-class workers while the high-class, unionized workers are able to maintain most of their privileges. It's a terrible situation. To make it worse, our legislative representatives and a large part of the electorate are very much infatuated with the (false) idea that our labor laws actually "protect" all workers, which makes it very hard to reform them. They are kind of a sacred cow to a lot of Brazilians. I don't see it getting better any time soon. (I'm a US-raised Brazilian who currently lives in Brazil, by the way)
- rafaelvasco 6y ago
  As a Brazilian I agree completely. You see, a story told several times is a very powerful thing. And Brazilian people have been told such a story by our government for so long that people not only don't realize how broken the system is, but they fight to protect it. To quote the best movie ever made: "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."