Film controversy discussion of the week: racism in Star Wars

This is not correct because of the price of goods in Brazil. Things get really expensive over here, quick example: the PS4 was, at release, US$399; over here, that went to R$4,000 (converting to dollars at the time, it would be around US$1,400), which means that a common good in the US becomes a luxury item for the high-midle and rich classes. The situation with guns is similar: even the simplest handgun costs around 6-7 months of minimum wage, which means that, even liberated, legal guns won't be affordable to poor and lower-middle classes, only to high-middle and rich - exactly the classes were you still find the most avid supporters of the current government. So gun liberation here wouldn't be arming his opposition, but his supporters.

The situation is more obvious where his bigger interests reside: our rural areas. His proposed liberation gives a lot of liberty not just to the sale, but to the use of guns by big farmers and miners, which are also his supporters. Ever since the right assumed the government in 2016, there are a lot of conflicts between farmers/miners and native tribes, who are steadily losing federal protection and having their lands invaded by armed militias - just this week, a chief of a Wajãpi tribe was assassinated. His discourses are always encouraging farmers to get violent and his proposed gun liberation laws are trying to make the invasion of native territories for exploration even more of a reality. The invasion/devastation of the Amazon forest grew up astoundingly 39% just in these 8 months since he became the president, so that's not just discourse, but a very real risk.

It's not just foolishness, mind you. His speeches are worrying not just because they are full of prejudice and outright inquisitorial-medieval views on society, but because he openly celebrates dictatorship as a form of government (considering the Brazilian dictatorship our "golden years") and praises people like Colonel Ustra for being a known torturer and killer in our dictatorship. And this is being put in practice: since last month, a lot of leaked conversations of the current Minister of Justice show that he is corrupt and was politically motivated when arrested Bolsonaro's main oppositor last year, pretty much frauding the elections. What is the president's and his minister's plan of action? Giving various declarations that the journalists will be arrested and signing an ordinance that allows them to expel foreigners from the country for being considered "dangerous" people (one of the journalists that unveiled the case is american, Glenn Greenwald). So they are rehearsing full-on censorship of the press, the only thing stopping them (until now) being our Supreme Court.

Also, this week, he sneerily suggested that he either participated or have insider knowledge about the killing (and probable torture) of a missing person in the dictatorship, the father of the current president of the lawyer Bar association. This is a person who is celebrating a military dictatorship, open to the use of torture and murder of political opposition, that is trying to impose censorship on the press and arrest journalists, and that wants to arm his supporters, all while keeping close to him a corrupt Justice Minister and having close ties to Brazilian militias. Although they talk about having a liberal economy, their plans always point to a heavy protectionism of our oligarchies - put all this together and you'll get why we aren't using the word "fascism" here just as a general pejorative term, it's truly the basis of our current government.

Hell, just to top the cake he even nominated his own son as embassador of Brazil in the US, and the guy doesn't even know english.

See, extreme-right, nationalist and religious zealot rhetorics in the US may just appear as foolishness, but when they are copied by people in nations where the institutions aren't solid and the democracy isn't guaranteed, then you see how much damage they can make in a short time, it's very scary.

scipioafricanus - It's hard to take everything into account because we are dealing with very different economic systems - during the dictatorships in the 60-80s in South America, most countries became "testing grounds" for a few experimental capitalist theories, so the economies over here became very screwed up (also on account of creating a huge debit with the US in that period, as the US was financially backing most of those governments).

That said: only a small part is the conversion rate, most of it is a screwed up taxation system. During the 60-80s (that dictatorship period), the taxation here progressively became more based on consumption instead of income. There's not a lot of income taxes once you get to a certain level: to give an idea, if you have a company, you pay zero income taxes on the money that you earn from the profits of your business; there's also no taxes over large fortunes and the percentage on larger incomes doesn't escalate accordingly (I'm struggling to translate this into english, so I'm simplifying a lot!). To compensate for that, it's our goods that receive heavy taxes - so that's how you get a US$ 1,800+ PS4 (EDIT: I'm correcting the value I said previously, it seems I miscalculated the conversion rates in the other post). Here's an article explaining the famous PS4 price and its taxes.

As a curiosity, that's why our PC gaming market is considerable: PC components have some tax reliefs and a lot are manufactured here (avoiding import taxes), so it's cheaper to buy a good gaming PC than a current console. It's still expensive, mind you, but still cheaper.

What the hell is this thread even about anymore. First we talked about Star Wars and racism, then about socialism and Brazil, and now we're talking about taxes and tariffs? What is the world coming to...

I just looked into it and it seems the PS4 started being manufactured here some time ago; the price wetn down 35% as soon as it did. Right now, in stores, the Slim 1TB model goes for 500 US$, and the Pro for 720 US$. Still expensive, but certainly better. Microsoft has been manufacturing their consoles here since the 360, so the One X goes for around 600 US$ (the One S is under 400 US$).