[Nathan Zachary]

"Wouldn’t lose sleep over Brazil getting nukes myself. It has a relatively advanced economy, a rapidly growing middle class, and an increasingly rational and secular population."

That "increasingly "rational" and secular population are the underclass and the drug lords.

[Clemenza]

Brazil is a very strange country. On the one hand, you have a rapidly growing middle class of entrepreneurs, skilled laborers, and white collar employees, on the other you still have the 15-20% of the country that is truly poor (and poverty in Brazil is considerably worse than it is here, despite a "welfare state" and socialized medicine, btw). You also have the phenomenon of folks talking and living Right, yet voting left.

Over the past 5 years, there has been a considerable decrease in the % of poor. The problem is that the underclass (which is disproportionately dominated by an ethnicity/race that disproportionately comprises our own underclass) has inculcated values that make it neigh impossible to leave the favelas. In short, while the working poor is becoming lower middle class, the non-working poor are stuck in a rut.

[Clemenza]

Brazil is a very strange country. On the one hand, you have a rapidly growing middle class of entrepreneurs, skilled laborers, and white collar employees, on the other you still have the 15-20% of the country that is truly poor (and poverty in Brazil is considerably worse than it is here, despite a "welfare state" and socialized medicine, btw). You also have the phenomenon of folks talking and living Right, yet voting left.

Over the past 5 years, there has been a considerable decrease in the % of poor. The problem is that the underclass (which is disproportionately dominated by an ethnicity/race that disproportionately comprises our own underclass) has inculcated values that make it neigh impossible to leave the favelas. In short, while the working poor is becoming lower middle class, the non-working poor are stuck in a rut.