The Michel Temer government is disastrous because in one year it did not promote the retaking of economic and social development by combating recession and unemployment, as well as withdrawing social rights from the population with the approval of the labor reform and the attempt to approve the Reform of Social Security at all costs to meet the requirements of the Washington Consensus. In addition, there is the aggravation of setting up a government whose members, including Michel Temer, are accused of corruption.

1. THE DISASTROUS MICHEL TEMER GOVERNMENT
Fernando Alcoforado *
In 1 year, the situation in Brazil became profoundly aggravated during the Michel
Temer government. Public accounts presented a deficit of R$ 58.2 billion. As a patch,
as early as March 2017 Minister Henrique Meirelles found it necessary to cut more than
R$ 42 billion in government investments. Only PAC works lost more than R$ 10
billion. Government investments are, historically, what activates the economy.
Therefore, the cut made is contrary to the economic recovery of Brazil. The public
accounts had the worst result for February 2017 in 16 years, or since the registration
began in 2001 to the point that the federal government took R$ 20 billion from Social
Security to pay interest to the banks.
Brazil's GDP fell by 3.6% in 2016. Minister Meirelles said in the early months of the
Temer administration that before the end of the year (2016) the economic recovery
would already be underway. The opposite occurred with the fall in GDP whose real
result is the economic disaster in which Brazil lives. Brazil has 14 million unemployed
and the economy is still stagnant. If we include those who gave up looking for a job or
did not do it, there are estimates that go to 20 million unemployed. If the economy
continues to shrink, the unemployment trend is increasing. It is Michel Temer's Brazil
leading the country to economic disaster.
Brazil's public accounts will show a deficit until 2018, according to a new study by
Credit Suisse, with data from 68 countries. Without an increase in tax revenues, the gap
in Brazilian public sector accounts will only be lost to Venezuela's deficit between 2015
and 2018. According to Credit Suisse, the recent adoption of a limit to the expansion of
government spending (PEC 241) and the possible approval of the Social Security
reform will be insufficient to avoid this scenario. Fitch has warned of the risk of
downgrading Brazil's sovereign credit rating if the government does not take extra
measures to curb public debt expansion. Countries that were on the verge of breaking
recently, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, do not find a deficit as alarming as the
Brazilian.
With the spending path predicted by Credit Suisse Bank, debt will reach 99% of GDP in
2024. The conclusion is that the challenge of balancing government accounts is high. In
addition, the expected fix may occur too late. Even if the next post-Temer government
pursues the limit of spending expansion and the Social Security reform is approved,
public debt will stop growing only in the middle of the next decade. Waiting ten years
to finally stabilize Brazil's accounts is a very long time. The patience of the population
towards the government will come to an end. In the Fitch Ratings analysis, Brazil's
economic scenario improved with the fall in inflation due to the recession, but the
stagnation of business confidence, still high consumer debt and high unemployment
hamper Brazil's economic recovery.
To meet the neoliberal impositions of the Washington Consensus, the Michel Temer
government approved with the support of the National Congress the labor reform and
tries to approve the reform of Social Security. The Labor reform of the Temer
government does not solve the many problems of the labor market. The largest of the
issues remains unresolved, a market with two classes of workers, one with law, and
another without law and without protection. According to the IBGE, 40% of the
workers do not have a formal contract. Brazil has a huge contingent of people out of any

2. legal protection. There are 10.5 million workers without a formal contract signed in
private companies. There are 4.1 million homeless employees. And there are still 22.1
million self-employed people who, in part, can be people in precarious work. And there
are still 14 million unemployed.
The labor reform of the Temer government ended the compulsory union tax, but it did
not end the taxes that support the employers representation, privileging the bosses
interests. Weak unions may end up benefiting bosses. Whoever looks serenely into the
Brazilian labor market knows that it needs various reforms to adapt to the world of work
in the 21st century. We have technologies that are shaping the world we are heading for.
The threat to current jobs is quite evident. Boston Consulting Group predicts that by
2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by softwares or robots, while a study by
the University of Oxford in the UK points out that 35% of current jobs in the country
run the risk of being automated in the next two decades (Wakefield, Jane. Quais
profissões estão ameaçadas pelos robôs? (What professions are threatened by robots?)
Available on the website
<http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/09/150914_profissoes_robos_lgb>).
The labor reform did not consider the end of employment with the technological
advance.
The Social Security reform proposed by the Temer government sets the minimum
retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women. The calculation of the proposed benefit
is 51% of the average salary plus 1 point for each contribution year. Those who
contribute for 25 years, for example, would have 51 + 25 = 76% of the average salary.
Even if the pension reform is approved by the National Congress, new adjustments will
be necessary in two years to avoid that the increase in social security spending in
addition to the expansion of the public debt take away resources from social programs
and other areas. Even approving the Social Security reform, we will live in the coming
years with two realities that will shock and generate tension for the federal government
in 2019 because it has set a hard limit for public spending and an INSS expenditure that
may continue to grow in absolute terms that can to prevent spending on education,
health, investment, etc.
The Federal Government wants to approve the Social Security reform claiming to be
deficient, which according to many analysts is not true. Since the National Constituent
Assembly from 1988 to the present day, these sectors have developed an active
defamatory and ideological campaign aimed at "demonizing" Social Security, whose
spending equals 8% of GDP. In flagrant confrontation with the Constitution of the
Republic, experts linked to the government strive to "prove" the financial unfeasibility
of the Social Security, to justify a new stage of retrocession in these social rights. To
finance Social Security (article 194 of the Federal Constitution), the constituents of
1988 created the Social Security Budget (Article 195), a set of own sources, exclusive
and endowed with a plurality of incidence. The social contributions paid by companies
on the payroll, billing and profit, and the contributions paid by workers on their earned
income are part of this exclusive list of sources of the Social Security Budget.
In summary, the Michel Temer government is disastrous because in one year it did not
promote the retaking of economic and social development by combating recession and
unemployment, as well as withdrawing social rights from the population with the
approval of the labor reform and the attempt to approve the Reform of Social Security at
all costs to meet the requirements of the Washington Consensus. In addition, there is the

3. aggravation of setting up a government whose members, including Michel Temer, are
accused of corruption.
*Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education and the Brazilian Academy of
Letters of the Rotary - Bahia Section, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional
Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic
planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of
Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000),
Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos
Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011),
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2015) and As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), among others