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Comment by cjalmeida | Hacker News Reader

Brazil has being doing something similar for almost a decade. It's by far the most efficient poverty reduction program in place.

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And now Brazil has twice bad crippling inflation that threatens a drastic revaluation of the currency (the first time they even had to rename their currency the "real" - who knows what's next) which threatens to retrace much of the progress made in reducing poverty. Who knows how much of that would have happened anyway due to economic liberalization and technological improvement?

I think its too harsh to blame fBolsa Família for the current state of the Brazilian economy. Its share of the budget is not even that big in the grand scheme of things. For example, subsidized loans the government/BNDES gives to large business (who coincidentally happen to be campaign contributors) are responsible for a bigger hole in the budget than the bolsa família.

Also, the reason we had to rename the currency last time was because Brazil had suffered from hyperinflation for so many decades that even after the government stopped printing money prices kept goingup out of sheer inertia. To give an idea, most supermarkets hired a person that would go around the aisles restickering things and mindlessly bumping prices by 2% every day.

Nowadays the government again has gone back to the times of a screwed up monetary policy but we are still far away from hyperinflation.

I went to brazil last year and i saw some of the poorest people on my entire life.

Brazil isnt a good example of this idea working...

It was MUCH worse before. a 27% reduction in poverty is pretty impressive in 4 years

Not so much when you realize part of that reduction comes from redefining what poverty means.

I haven't heard about that. do you have a source where I could read more?

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