Amid Brazil’s COVID chaos, socialist Marica forges different path (covid & digital currency)

Al Jazeera ^ | 4/27/21

[EBH]

Located just 60km from Rio de Janeiro, Marica has modelled itself into a very different city, paying residents a universal basic income, using its own digital currency and procuring its own vaccines.

Marica, Brazil — More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil seems set on beating its own tragic records on a daily basis. By April, 4,000 Brazilians were dying every 24 hours — an average of one every 20 seconds — and many while waiting for beds in overcrowded intensive care units.

Hundreds of hospitals were running out of intubation kits in what the country’s leading health institution, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), called the worst “sanitary collapse” in Brazilian history.

The recipe for Marica’s success story includes millions of dollars in oil revenues and the decision to invest part of that money in healthcare, education, social programmes and a virtual currency called mumbuca.

Last year, revenues from the pre-salt oil reserves off the shores of Marica totalled 1.4 billion reais ($252m), “but measures to redistribute the riches and make our local economy thrive were taken in 2014, long before COVID-19, when we created the universal basic income programme,” said Marica’s Vice-Mayor Diego Zeidan, a 22-year-old university student majoring in history.

“When the pandemic began, we already had in place a structure built to deal with years of economic recession,” Zeidan told Al Jazeera. “We just had to upgrade it to match this much more serious crisis.”

[EBH]

And just like that an entire city turns to digital currency and universal basic income...

never let a crisis...go to waste.

[AZJeep]

Oil revenue?!
Are they killing the Earth?
Send Joe Stolen there and let him stop this madness!

[jdsteel]

“And just like that an entire city turns to digital currency and universal basic income...”

Coming to a country near you.