The real Brazil belies the image of Bolsonaro's booming economy.

The man who should be presiding over Brazil, but has spent almost four years campaigning for reelection, said on September 7th, the Bicentennial of Independence Day, which he used for his election campaign, that the country's economy is booming, contrary to what official statistics say. Yet another distortion from the president who has lied the most in the country's history.

"When it seemed that all was lost for the world, Brazil is reborn, with a booming economy," Bolsonaro told his supporters. 

In the real Brazil, what everyone sees is hunger, jobs without rights, and a decline in purchasing power, which has been eroded by inflation for a year, especially food inflation, affecting the poorest workers the most. Those ignored by Bolsonaro tell a different story.  

A story that the president says he doesn't see on the streets. 

He doesn't see the 33 million people going hungry in the country.

He doesn't see that 6 out of 10 Brazilians live with some degree of food insecurity, meaning that if they eat at lunch, they don't eat at dinner, or they spend at least one day a week surviving on chicken bones, fish carcasses, or even worse. 

There are 125,2 million people in this situation—a 7,2% increase since 2020—but he is completely blind to this tragedy because he only sees his personal power project.

Staying in the presidency is essential for the Bolsonaro clan to escape justice, where the president, his sons, and even his ex-wife Ana Cristina have to answer for crimes such as the "rachadinha" scheme (a scheme involving the misappropriation of public funds), the purchase of 51 properties with cash, the president's behavior during the pandemic, the use of public money for personal promotion as everyone saw on September 7th, and so many others.

That's why Bolsonaro also doesn't see the suffering of the working class who endure jobs without rights, low wages, and months and months of unemployment. For him, only reelection matters, which will keep his family out of jail.

According to the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Contínua) by IBGE, 39,3 million Brazilians are in the informal sector, without rights to vacation, 13th-month salary, or social security benefits such as sick pay or maternity leave. If they become ill or pregnant, workers are left without income and become part of the statistics of those who go hungry if they do not receive help from family or neighbors. 

Inflation, which remained in double digits from September 2021 to July of this year, eroded the purchasing power of Brazilians over the past year. I read in the newspapers that there was deflation. But who benefits from this deflation except the wealthiest? Onions alone rose 91,21% in 12 months. Long-life milk rose 60,81%, diesel oil (53,16%), mangoes (47,05%), and ground coffee (46,34%) in just 12 months. Workers earning one, two, or three minimum wages have already stopped buying these products months ago.

Ah, but it's falling, insist the defenders of the politics of death. Yes, it is, but there's still a lot more to fall for the people who haven't received a real raise, as is the case for those earning minimum wage – Bolsonaro ended the minimum wage valorization policy created by Lula –; and the thousands with meager frozen wages or who do odd jobs to survive, so they can go back to entering a supermarket and leaving with a cart full of basic necessities, essential to decently feed their families. 

It's also falling because, fearing losing the election in the first round, Bolsonaro has packed Petrobras with his own people, and every time Lula rises in the polls, the state-owned company reduces the price of gasoline. But for how long can this scheme last? He doesn't think about a sustainable policy for the oil company because he has no plan for any area of ​​government, not even for essential ones like decent jobs, easier access to credit with lower interest rates, infrastructure, etc.

How long can this deception last without the PPI, created after the coup, being abolished? There is no effective solution to the fall in fuel prices without ending the PPI, Petrobras' pricing policy that ties fuel price adjustments to increases in the international price of oil and the dollar exchange rate. The PPI was created by Temer and kept intact by Bolsonaro. 

As our president Lula says, we earn in reais and pay in dollars to fill up our cars' tanks. 

In real-life Brazil, another tragedy strikes Brazilian families: debts that leave heads of households distressed. 

The percentage of families with overdue debts reached 79% in the country in August, according to a survey by the National Confederation of Commerce (CNC). Almost 30% are in default, meaning they have not paid their debts and have had their names added to the credit blacklist. 

To bring the real Brazil closer to Bolsonaro's imagined vision, we need empathy, to feel the pain of others, and not to say things like "I'm not a gravedigger," as he said at the height of the pandemic.

We need a plan to generate decent jobs, an efficient and sustainable social program.

We need to restore the social and labor rights that were seized by the 2016 coup.

For Brazil to truly regain a thriving economy, it needs a national project, not just a personal project of someone who wants to get elected to avoid going to jail along with their children.

And we all know who has this plan ready, who has the empathy, qualifications, and competence to make the country grow again, distribute income, generate quality jobs, and restore social and labor rights that were taken away after the coup.