Poor Brazilians, today, eat better than middle class Americans. Basic conditions have been improving considerably since the center-left took power. The neo-liberal right has swung back into power recently and we've been seeing things worsen in lockstep with their re-ascension.
Don't listen to this guy. Building these dams does nothing to improve general welfare. It doesn't make energy cheaper. Energy prices continue to rise dramatically. Furthermore BNDES is funding these projects at 6% NEGATIVE interest. 20bi at 6% is a lot of money. How are these projects supposed to help anyone other than BNP, Alcoa, Camargo Corrêa, and Odebrecht??
>If those who complain about it would go to Brazil and try to live a middle-class life there with a job in shitty conditions going through a crisis every decade, always feeling things aren't stable enough to make a living.
I am a US citizen, who has been living in Brazil continuously for 10 years. I've made 200 a month and 10000 a month. Right now I live just fine with a wife and kid on R$2000-3000 per month, in Sao Paulo.
Brazil is not impoverished like it was in the nineties. The main problem today financial irresponsibility. Decades of inflation and an endemic infatuation with American Consumer Culture has bred a system of financial priorities that run contrary to what is considered correct in many other countries.
>Perhaps living in a big city, taking 2-3 hours to go to work, then 2-3 hours to go back, I've bet that they wouldn't care too much about Amazon
I have spent 6-7 hours in daily commute. It did not affect my concern for corruption, unjust appropriation of traditional lands, or deforestation. I continued caring. This is a question of education and contact with nature, not money.
Brazilian has an unfortunate hertiage of institutionalized domination. It was one of the most effective mass-misinformation apparatii in the world.
I am appalled by the behavior of the traditional ruling elite and their shameless pandering to Europe and the US. They have been selling off water, oil, land, and mineral rights to multinational interests for pennies on the dollar for centuries. To this day it continues as the default business practice.