The political knifes are drawn

[SamIam]

This is the trouble with getting information from blogs - it is usually biased and often incomplete. Brazil does NOT use the redistribution of wealth in any real way to combat poverty.

According to the Brown Journal of World Affairs, Brazilian social spending is characterized by disparate targeting performances with few programs succeeding in reaching the poor, while substantial expenditures in all “social” areas disproportionately benefit the middle class and the rich.

Just two examples:

1) The zero percent enrollment of the bottom 40% in income at Brazil's universities is scandalous. Any pretense of equal, or even mildly unequal, access to university in Brazil is a sorry fiction.

2) Over 50 percent of Brazil's unemployment insurance expenditures go to the top 40 percent in income, while the poorest Brazilians, those in indigence, receive a paltry 3 percent of the program’s
resources.

Brazil is an example of the "good old boy system" where those who have the wealth ensure they keep all of it for themselves - not of the benefits of cash transfers to the poor.