The Wonders of The Wizard of "Agro-Óz"

RICARDO GOMES RODRIGUES
23 de fev. de 2021
4 min de leitura

The Wizard of Agro-Óz

The issue here is the capacity to generate more production when compared to the capacity to generate more jobs.

The "wonders" of agribusiness technology so popularized by the corporate media influenced by the Yankees as for the complex Estadao-Folha-Globo are not affecting the ability to generate more jobs, but on the contrary they are diminishing.

This multiplying effect of employment-wage-income is closely linked to the mass production of consumer goods, since it is exactly the industrial process that directly affects wages, employment and income in a virtuous chain effect; as productivity increases, wages and consequently income are also increased, thereby generating more jobs.

The capital market expresses this beneficial effect and grows; thus, everyone wins, generating income from an industrialization process that increases the size of the middle class and the market itself.

The beneficial effects of agribusiness, as they are at the beginning of the production chain, do not generate enough benefits linked to the same proportions and intensities, since they are not directly linked to the production of consumer goods, such as refrigerators, automobiles, clothing, which generate jobs on a large scale, feeding the virtuous effect chained with more wages, jobs and income.

The contribution of agribusiness to job creation is limited and watertight, since it is contained at the beginning of the production chain; the more advanced technologies they may be used in these processes; they may not contribute to a more a beneficial large-scale multiplying effects for the next stages in the production chain; as they are not consumer products but commodities, and the reason for the name of this type of market explains everything.

The capacity of agribusiness to generate foreign exchange is closely linked to the equivalent inability of the industrialization process to generate more production, increasing wages, jobs, income, and consequently the size of the middle class, that is, the consumer market itself.

We are, therefore, facing a vicious process here that, as deindustrialization progresses; the consumer market and the size of the middle class decreases, nevertheless, generating more foreign exchange, since the imports of consumer goods decreases; thereby, increasing exports of agribusiness commodities.

Unemployment and Deindustrialization

As a consequence, the Brazilian economy is able to increasingly generate GDP (Gross Domestic Product) but not jobs in equivalent proportions. Productivity increases are limited to the areas subjected to industrial automation, pushing jobs in two conflictual directions.

One towards those who can, being a tiny minority, and who are able to invest in more specialized high-productivity jobs, increasing their salaries and incomes dramatically, especially in the areas of high technologies and finances. They enjoy health plans, social benefits and more stable jobs.

The others are those who cannot, being the vast majority, and who scape depleted public education without the ability to invest in jobs other than those with low productivity, getting, when they do, security jobs for shopping malls and supermarkets, store attendance, chambermaids in hotels or even working for general services. They enjoy few social benefits, restricted to food coupons and other compensatory policies. And for this kind of jobs, so quickly they are hired; they are fired, generating stress, uncertainty and social instability.

At the End of the Rainbow

The areas benefited by the wonders of the Wizard of “Agro-Óz” are invariably of low economic and population densities, representing urban areas of little expression.

On the other hand, 119 million Brazilians live in 80 Metropolitan Regions or Urban Agglomerations with high population densities, but now, due to this immense process of deindustrialization, they are subject to a substantial drop in the economic density of these areas, generating 30 million unemployment or underemployment, which in the case of Brazil means almost the same thing.

Our most urgent concern is this: how to define public policies capable of generating mass jobs creation with the objective of reducing these 30 million under or unemployment Brazilians living in these critical regions of the country.

The agribusiness region, as it is of low density, therefore, it is not so affected by this problem. Now, 119 million are out of this magical world of "Agro-Óz", depending upon unproductive jobs and with no hope of increasing productivity and therefore wages or income any time soon. Without industrialization there is no middle class possible, only the magical world of " Agro-Óz" of unemployed people who never reach the end of the rainbow.

This neoliberal fool chatter is not only exhausted, but now it is quickly running out of Brazil's patience with more of that same bullshit of privatizations, reforms of I don't know what else, sinking its heads into this ostrich hole they are in, looking like, every day even more, as a frog in the pot that when it doesn’t realize that the water started boiling and it just can't jump out before it's too late.

The Return of Import Substitution and The Neoliberal Frog

There is no way around to avoid the return of import substitution policies and that will be a hell of a good fight. We live in a situation of social emergency, which not all the army of these Brazilian Generals will be able to contain.

We cannot continue watching the sad spectacle of growing numbers of old Brazilians middle class, selling Yankee industrial trinkets of Communist China on the streets of Brazilian cities, while the number of our industries decreases.

These neoliberals here continue to scraping the pot to remove the crusts, sending the remains of the Brazilian industries to become more and more Chinese industrial jobs, leaving us with the underemployment of street vendors.

The return of import substitution would immediately generate more jobs, removing street vendors, bringing jobs back to Brazil, removing them from Communist China.

By not realizing the seriousness of the present social situation in which we currently live in Brazil, these elites of Brazilian Generals, of the complex Estadao-Folha-Globo and of the notorious submission political model Covas-Dória; are in danger of losing their heads, literally, in this labyrinth of national policies of neoliberal frogs.