Good morning! Today, we talk about Brazil’s skewed military spending. The upcoming (and explosive) January 8 congressional inquiry. And why employers will have to keep racial data on their workers.
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Brazil’s military spending drops
Amid the war in Ukraine and heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, the world is going on a military spending spree, according to an annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Brazil, however, is going in the opposite direction.
- Military spending has fallen both in absolute terms (adjusted for inflation) and as a percentage of GDP. Interestingly, it dropped in each of the years Jair Bolsonaro served as president, despite his constant pandering to the barracks.
Big picture. Military spending in Brazil goes primarily to salaries, administrative costs, and pensions. Officers have the most generous pension system and social security framework in the country. The per capita pension fund deficit for military officers is more than 6,800 percent higher than for private civilian workers.
- Spending on military equipment went from accounting for 15...