Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:32 pm  

Brazil?

Nuts.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:08 pm  

Charlie Sheen wrote:

This news is out of date by a month, maybe 2.

ohmygod !!!!!

you mean the UK has now been overtaken by Italy ?

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:09 pm  

Aren't countries like Brazil and India simply catching up with the civilised world, rather than us going boobs up?

Their sheer sizes should make them bigger than us, its just that they have been badly run for donkey's years means they have lagged behind upto now.

Saying that, standard of living wise, they are still a long way behind.....A person in the UK earning £25k would earn just 7 or 8 grand doing the equivalent work in Brazil or India....So basically, the population are being seriously shafted in order to build this growth.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:15 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

So basically, the population are being seriously shafted in order to build this growth.

How do you work that out? People with those sort of jobs are way better off than most of their compatriots and previous generations.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:24 pm  

Dally wrote:

How do you work that out? People with those sort of jobs are way better off than most of their compatriots and previous generations.

They probably are, but compared to the similar worker in a similar job here in the UK, they lag behind standard of living wise.

Its why we ship all that call centre work to India isn't it??....Millions of desperate job seekers prepared to work for peanuts....No wonder all these unscrupulous big businesses use them so much.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:25 pm  

unfortunately in every 'civilised' country in the world the gap between rich and poor is getting wider but maybe in the developing nations the gap is narrowing ?
For example the average chinese person (in china) enjoys a better quality of life than say, 20 years ago - the majority may still live in relative poverty but their standards are improving whereas in somewhere like the UK or France or example the overall quality of life is better though the gap between rich and poor is widening

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:24 pm  

We've given them £14,000,000 since 1989?

It's like Bill Gates' Mum still giving him pocket money

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Wed Mar 07, 2012 8:12 pm  

What these right wing papers won't point out of course is that Brazil's economic miracle over the past decade came largely under the 7 year presidency of the socialist President Lula, the ex trade union official.

There are a lot of problems in Brazil particularly crime, corruption, and the tax and regulation rules there are massively complicated for anyone trying to set up a business, but their economy is improving, they have got good potential to exploit oil, and out of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that are usually cited as the most influential emerging economies, I think Brazil has the most optimistic future.

The Brazilian football league has got some huge sponsorship in the last couple of years and with the strengthening of its currency I think we might see quite a lot of top players heading to play in Brazil, where it used to be a breeding ground for talent that would go to Europe.

They have got the World Cup in 2014 and Rio hosts the Olympic in 2016, it will be interesting to see what state Brazil's rapid development is in by 2016.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:55 am  

Given the now critical status of many of the world's finite resources the LAST thing we need to see is populous nations such as Brazil, India etc. attempting to emulate our colossal feats of consumption.

Re: Brazil overtakes the UK !!! : Thu Mar 08, 2012 8:50 am  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

They probably are, but compared to the similar worker in a similar job here in the UK, they lag behind standard of living wise.

Its why we ship all that call centre work to India isn't it??....Millions of desperate job seekers prepared to work for peanuts....No wonder all these unscrupulous big businesses use them so much.

Well, the cost of living in those countries is less than it is here, so multi and trans-national companies can therefore get labour at lower costs. They can pay more to a qualified doctor to sit in a call centre answering the phone than a hospital can , but that's still far less than they'd pay over here.

But all this growth is on the basis of making things – things that are often sold to the 'developed' world; us. Think of just how many things you buy that are made in China, India etc. All this was partly the aim of neo-liberalism: the developed economies were so developed that they could stop producing things, de-indusatrialise and live off service economies (and still grow).

For that to work, we all had to be encouraged to buy, buy, buy and consume in ways that our parents (well, certainly of my generation and older) would not have dreamt of doing. If that's the case, it makes sense that things are cheaper to encourage consumerism – which also means that they are not of the same quality as more expensive goods might have been some years ago. And that's without mentioning how obsolescence is now built into goods. So the washing machine (as I found out this week) does not last anywhere near the time that it once did and you have to shell out for a new one more frequently. So even if you don't buy into the cult of 'aspirationalism' (because consumption is what that is all about), you still have to buy things more than you once would have.

That 'aspirational' thing is funny: we'd once have called it 'keeping up with the Jonses' and laughed at those who did it. Now so many people do it – they want their homes to look like the pages of a design magazine, for instance. And of course, the rise in all those 'lifestyle' magazines and programmes and exhibitions etc etc etc help to maintain and develop that readiness to consume – and, of course, provide jobs.

Altogether, really quite depressing.