Deforestation of the Amazon, kapoeira and carnavals is everything I know about Brasil without googling.
ponytail!
Reference: S01E04 of Bob's Burgers
Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#32I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…
What I don't get is why Argentina's economy has so much problems and inflation compared to Brazil, what is it they are doing differently? Why don't they do whatever it is Brazil is doing to be stable?
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#33I run a IT services based in Brazil. Deep pool of real talent and commitment to quality in work (very different from what we hear from customers who hire developers from other countries). The country is not cheap though. High taxation makes everything very expensive, from cars (a piece of junk costs $15,000 and up) to MacBooks (US$3,000+). Things like cheese and wine are more expensive than in Europe (and I am talkin…
My take is high tariffs on high tech stuff holds Brazil back.
The issue is not the tariff rate per se, but the extremely complex and dysfunctional tax system that benefits the king's cronies.
One example I like to use is the price of dishwasher detergent. Take in account that having dishwashers is a luxury in South America.
A brand-name ~5 lb dishwasher detergent powder package retails for $ 6.50 ($ 7.10 if we consider sales tax) in the US. Last month I've been in Argentina and saw that a brand-name 5 lb package which is imported(!) retails for something like $ 7.50 w/ tax. A 6% premium considering that it could be considered a luxury product, there's also higher sales tax, but it is essentially the same price. It's a commodity after all, it's just detergent powder.
The same detergent powder that is sold in Argentina, manufactured in Brazil no less, retails for $ 32 here.
Why? There are no feasible alternatives, there is no feasible competition, and people will pay. The local companies here try to excuse themselves blaming high taxes, but this is not the full picture.
If I wanted to setup a company to benefit myself from the arbitrage, I'd be out of money just to hire a tax lawyer to understand the tax implications of importing and reselling detergent powder. What's the effective retail tax rate for detergent powder? Who knows?
Now, let's assume for our exercise the tax rate is insane and detergent powder has a 100% tax rate, I could be buying them at retail prices, selling them at half of what it is currently being sold and still make a profit.
If this detergent powder price point is just pure profit on the manufacturer/retailer part, I'd rather have low stock to not be burned when they decrease their prices to cut me, but to benefit from the true import duties that are available for businesses (yes, that 60% import duty everybody hears about is only for regular people) I'd have to spend a lot of money to structure a full sized import/export business and order a ton of detergent to dilute my fixed costs. Now the risk of loss is greater, and my small arbitrage business idea doesn't look so good.
The established companies won't have any competition as it is crazy as you see above, so they set the price point they want.
It is exactly the same story with the automotive industry, fashion and even Apple. They famously sell the most expensive iPhones in the world, but I actually got mine 2 weeks after launch from an official reseller that just charged a fair price (like 20% over US retail) on a sale.
Sorry for the long rant, the taxes are high, specially when you consider the perceived return on the tax paid, but it's not the full story.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#34I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…
What I don't get is why Argentina's economy has so much problems and inflation compared to Brazil, what is it they are doing differently? Why don't they do whatever it is Brazil is doing to be stable?
I'm no expert on the topic, but I think that Argentina has more of a tendency toward socialist economic policies.
Argentina is especially known for Juan Perón [1], who implemented a lot of socialist policies that were quite popular with the working class but were not generally helpful for Argentina.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#35I married a Brazilian, but I probably have some misinformed thoughts Economic — I think it probably has the most potential of any country out there, except maybe India. A bit too protectionist, I don't understand why taxes on electronics are so expensive when Brazil doesn't produce them at home, as well as food being so expensive, or taxing cheap Chinese e-commerce sites when people don't have much money in the first…
> taxing cheap Chinese e-commerce sites when people don't have much money in the first place See, you have a protectionist response to a problem, no wonder why others might be protectionist too.
Manaus is an eletronics manufacturer for brands such as Samsung, LG, Panasonic and other big corporates, that is why Brazil taxes imports. To protect the local market otherwise people will buy ar conditioning and tx on amazon and aliexpress for example.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#36I think Brazil seems cool in so many ways, but it seems very politically corrupt. Also, one one observation is if there's a Reddit video clip of some crazy random shooting or assassination or off-duty policeman shooting, it seems to almost always be coming from Brazil, which is pretty scary.
Yeah Brazil unfortunatelly is a 3rd world country, and corruption, narcotrafficking and high crime rate is the status quo over here.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#37From my point of view as a 33 yo Brazilian, we have a lot of natural resources, huge domestic market, a lot of talents.
We're talking about ~210 million people. We're just below USA in population in the American continent.
It's good for countries like USA to look after us, i believe we will eventually grow, we're still a babe democracy, the military dictatorship ended on the 80's.
So we still have a long way to go but we will get there. Brazil is one of the main SOY and Meat exporter. We're evolving greatly on the tech business preparing the man labor and launching startups on the market.
So yeah, keep a look out for us and let's grow together as entrepeneurs.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#38From my point of view as a 33 yo Brazilian, we have a lot of natural resources, huge domestic market, a lot of talents. We're talking about ~210 million people. We're just below USA in population in the American continent. It's good for countries like USA to look after us, i believe we will eventually grow, we're still a babe democracy, the military dictatorship ended on the 80's. So we still have a long way to go bu…
entrepreneurs> as a few friends mentioned here, there is a lot of good developers here in Brazil and from the buying power (USD > BRL) it's way cheaper to hire and contract the same level of professionals here.
The same point of view goes to investing, buying power with the current conversion rate it's very welcoming to invest in Brazil, from real state, to tech. FYI :P
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#39Once upon a time I wanted to spend new year's eve in Rio. Now I don't want to go because it feels unsafe. I know a lot of great hackers come from Brazil so I know a lot of people still care. That's the thing with countries: they are either getting better or growing worse and Brazil unfortunately seems to fall in the latter category.
Don't go into the communities/favelas (unless you really want to, then find a guide) and you'll be fine. New Years in Rio is high profile and well-known enough that any incidents with foreigners/estrangeiros would be a huge scandal so it's relatively safe at that time.
Some guys came to rob me at Copacobana beach, some 100 meters from a police station. I showed them my empty pockets and they went away.
Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
My take is high tariffs on high tech stuff holds Brazil back.
The issue is not the tariff rate per se, but the extremely complex and dysfunctional tax system that benefits the king's cronies. One example I like to use is the price of dishwasher detergent. Take in account that having dishwashers is a luxury in South America. A brand-name ~5 lb dishwasher detergent powder package retails for $ 6.50 ($ 7.10 if we consider sales tax) in the US. Last month I've been in Argentina and…
Ok, so I went and checked what are the taxes for detergent powder. It could be very wrong as I don't know the nuances of the sales tax.
There are the federal import duties + taxes, amounting to 29.4%. Note that this rate is specific for powdered dishwasher detergent.
Considering the standard São Paulo state sales tax of "18%" which is actually 21,95% as you don't simply multiply the good's price by the rate, but divide it by 1-rate, you end up with a 58,38% effective tax rate for importing and selling the detergent powder. Ah yes, the federal taxes compose the tax base as well, so you are paying taxes on the privilege of being taxed.
A good proxy for the right retail price would be just multiplying the US retail price - that already includes the profit - by the effective rate, which would land it at around $ 12. Consider that no sane business would be paying retail prices (and the import duties are applied to the bulk/transfer price), you can figure out that there's at least 169% of profit tacked on the package of detergent.