#Brazil to introduce US$25/month broadly-defined #cultural #stipend for all workers earning <500% of the minimum wage tinyurl.com/b6wwnpz—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) January 18, 2013
Payment recalls much-admired Bolsa Família social security programme; electronic cards will be used to distribute cash tinyurl.com/34fpogj—
Asad Yawar (@Mediolana) January 18, 2013
I’m sure the poor would prefer to just have the money instead. It shows that governments are not as poor as they pretend to be sometimes. They have cash for ‘imaginative’ projects like this. Brazil still has shanty towns, but presumably there’s not the same urgency to do something about that.
Brazil has managed to increase the share of the GDP cake being taken home by its poorest citizens in the last decade or so – no small feat when the trend in many countries has been sharply the other way. That said, this measure could (as you infer) be seen as too paternalistic: surely workers can decide on what they spend a stipend?