Speaker 1: This is a podcast about money and inequality, but I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about earthquakes a lot lately. I found these
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube. The footage is grainy. It's usually coming
Speaker 1: from a surveillance camera or one of those spy camps
Speaker 1: people used to keep an eye on their pets while
Speaker 1: they're out. At first, nothing's happening. You see a nondescript
Speaker 1: office or living room, sometimes inside of a store, and
Speaker 1: then a dog jolts into the frame or jumps up
Speaker 1: from somewhere you didn't notice he was lying. He starts sparking,
Speaker 1: then darting around, seemingly away from whatever danger he senses,
Speaker 1: but also maybe towards it. To the viewer. At first,
Speaker 1: it's funny because it looks like he's trying to scare
Speaker 1: the wind. But then a few seconds later, everything in
Speaker 1: the room starts moving, televisions fall over, lamps, wobble, painting, swim.
Speaker 1: But the dogs are reacting to our pea waves, the
Speaker 1: earliest signs of an earthquake. Humans can't hear them. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we feel them as a jolt, but they sound an
Speaker 1: alarming signal to dogs and some other animals up to
Speaker 1: a minute or two before the bigger waves come and
Speaker 1: the damage begins. There's another thing I learned about earthquakes.
Speaker 1: The fault lines, the cracks in the earth whose movement
Speaker 1: caused the shaking. Each one has an upper limit to
Speaker 1: its potency, determined by its length and depth. In other words,
Speaker 1: the existing fractures are what determined how bad the event
Speaker 1: will ultimately be. The pandemic, in so many ways, has
Speaker 1: felt like an earthquake to me. It was an event
Speaker 1: that we all felt, but not equally. There were existing
Speaker 1: fault lines. Some economies had programs that people could depend
Speaker 1: on when their jobs suddenly disappeared because of lockdowns. Others didn't.
Speaker 1: Some health care systems were already dealing with doctor and
Speaker 1: nurse shortages going into a pandemic that would sap the
Speaker 1: last bit of their resources. Others didn't. And in some
Speaker 1: countries workers had few protections like paid time off if
Speaker 1: they caught the virus, others didn't. As soon as the
Speaker 1: impact hit in early we knew where those fault lines
Speaker 1: were and saw the damage immediately and death's, job losses
Speaker 1: and so many other ways. And it's only now that
Speaker 1: some of the dust from the initial hit has settled
Speaker 1: that we're able to see what we're left with Jovis
Speaker 1: claims coming in, I mean really jumping from the week
Speaker 1: before pretty brutal. Three point to a million records. Six
Speaker 1: point six million Americans filed for unemployment last week. Many
Speaker 1: Brazilians lost their jobs during lockdowns. While prices for rent, food,
Speaker 1: and gas are on the rise, engine working women were
Speaker 1: the worst impacted by the pandemic. Well now to the
Speaker 1: billionaire boom. According to Bloomberg's super yacht charters are up.
Speaker 1: Over three hundred and a billionaire was created every twenty
Speaker 1: six hours during this pandemic. No, I'm not waiting in
Speaker 1: line for a COVID test with the public. The gross
Speaker 1: in his time for a wealth tax in America. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. It's not often that
Speaker 1: a crisis heads the entire world. The effects of war
Speaker 1: and famine and natural disasters canry far and wide. COVID
Speaker 1: was different because it happened everywhere. But over the last
Speaker 1: two years we've seen how a million different variables, or
Speaker 1: those fault lines, determined our health, safety, and economic security.
Speaker 1: People with the fewest resources were more likely to die,
Speaker 1: especially in the earliest waves, and then poorer countries had
Speaker 1: less access to life saving vaccines. Then there were the
Speaker 1: economic disparities. Millions of people are at risk of hunger
Speaker 1: because of the COVID nineteen pandemic. Even in the US
Speaker 1: and Europe, more and more individuals are relying on food
Speaker 1: handouts just to get by. With unemployment levels sloring, international
Speaker 1: organizations expect the income gap between the richest and the
Speaker 1: poorest to get even wider. The fear early on in
Speaker 1: the pandemic was that we'd come out of this crisis
Speaker 1: worse off. It felt almost inevitable. But that's not exactly
Speaker 1: how things played out over the last few years. In fact,
Speaker 1: what happened varied widely depending on how governments and society
Speaker 1: has stepped in to address the crisis and what kinds
Speaker 1: of foundations they had. Going in over the next eight weeks,
Speaker 1: we're going to seven different countries to see how this
Speaker 1: world changing event shifted the balance between the very richest
Speaker 1: and the very poorest and everyone in between. Even before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, alarm bells had been going off about global inequality.
Speaker 1: Places with greater relative equality are more stable, They provide
Speaker 1: people with economic security and more mobility to better their lives,
Speaker 1: and going into the pandemic. Some of the most equal
Speaker 1: places in the world, like the US and European countries,
Speaker 1: we're moving in the wrong direction. So when COVID rattled
Speaker 1: the global economy, economists and policymakers were worried about what
Speaker 1: might happen. So it happened. I decided to ask Ben
Speaker 1: Steve Verman. He's a reporter at Bloomberg who covers wealth inequality,
Speaker 1: spending his days deepen data and talking with experts and economists.
Speaker 1: He's been keeping a close eye unwealth inequality during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Right before the pandemic hit. What direction was wealth inequality
Speaker 1: headed in globally coming into the pandemic. There were several
Speaker 1: trends that we were watching. There were a few positive trends.
Speaker 1: There was a growth of the middle class in Asian countries,
Speaker 1: especially China that overall reduced inequality worldwide. And then you
Speaker 1: had the number of people living in extreme poverty had
Speaker 1: actually fallen. So those were positive trends, but there was
Speaker 1: some concern that they were running out of steam, and
Speaker 1: we had these negative trends that we're making inequality worse.
Speaker 1: In the developed countries like the United States, middle class
Speaker 1: was not doing as well and then you also had
Speaker 1: not just the top one percent. Really it's the top
Speaker 1: point one percent or point one percent. The people the
Speaker 1: very top were doing much better than every one else.
Speaker 1: And really there was a lot of concern about the
Speaker 1: amount of power and wealth that folks at the top had.
Speaker 1: So we were wondering would those trends continue, And there
Speaker 1: was a lot of pessimism that basically a recession would
Speaker 1: come along and it would hurt the middle class and
Speaker 1: the wealthy would benefit. Okay, so then March economy is
Speaker 1: basically shut down entirely. It sounds like economists and politicians
Speaker 1: and policymakers they would all think it's definitely gonna get worse.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of pessimism at that early moment
Speaker 1: in in the pandemic, and I ended up writing about
Speaker 1: this and researching some of the history, and what I
Speaker 1: found was that when you have these major disruptions, if
Speaker 1: you look at past pandemics, for example, inequality doesn't always
Speaker 1: get worse. Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes these disruptions either
Speaker 1: they can destroy a lot of wealth at the top
Speaker 1: and then allow people at the bottom to rise up.
Speaker 1: Or it can change the labor market, it can change
Speaker 1: the financial market in these really surprising ways. So I
Speaker 1: didn't think at that moment we really knew what was
Speaker 1: going to happen. We were really entering into an unpredictable situation.
Speaker 1: So of those two potential scenarios, thanks getting worse or
Speaker 1: something surprising happening, what ended up happening. We're only just
Speaker 1: starting to get the data to answer that question. What
Speaker 1: we do know from the last two years is that
Speaker 1: the billionaires and the top one percent have done very
Speaker 1: very well. The world's five richest people gained about one
Speaker 1: point seven trillion dollars over a couple of years. If
Speaker 1: you just look at Elon Musk, for example, there was
Speaker 1: a moment after he became the richest man in the
Speaker 1: world where he was worth more than three hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of chatter at the time
Speaker 1: that he might have a chance to become a trillionaire.
Speaker 1: At the same time, governments, at least in the United
Speaker 1: States and the EU had more of a sense that
Speaker 1: we need to spread the relief, and so people at
Speaker 1: the bottom got a fair amount in terms of stimulus payments,
Speaker 1: extra unemployment checks, and enhanced child text credit that was
Speaker 1: introduced in the United States, and so if you actually
Speaker 1: look at the bottom fifty percent or so, their wealth
Speaker 1: has actually gone up quite a bit. It's basically doubled
Speaker 1: in the last two years in terms of dollar amount,
Speaker 1: and it's still a tiny share of total US wealth,
Speaker 1: but their share has been growing. And we don't know
Speaker 1: how long this is going to last as inflation comes
Speaker 1: along here, inflation could actually just completely erase all these
Speaker 1: games in the next few years. We'll see, But for now,
Speaker 1: there's some signs that the poorest Americans sort of the
Speaker 1: working class you could say, and the bottom fifty of
Speaker 1: the country have done pretty well. Considering so that sounds
Speaker 1: like a pretty US or maybe Western Europe focused story.
Speaker 1: How did it play out in other countries that were
Speaker 1: maybe starting from different places of an equality. Well, not
Speaker 1: every place had the resources to give a big bail out.
Speaker 1: Not everyone can afford to trillions and trillions of hours
Speaker 1: of stimulus, So different countries made different policy choices and
Speaker 1: that ended up influencing the economy and how those countries
Speaker 1: went through the pandemic. Another issue there is COVID and
Speaker 1: how how countries managed COVID and how much either lockdowns
Speaker 1: or the virus itself disrupted their economy. Some were in
Speaker 1: lockdown for really long periods of time, and both of
Speaker 1: those things, the stimulus and managing the virus, ended up
Speaker 1: having disparate impacts depending on where you lived. If you
Speaker 1: look at Taiwan, which really managed the virus quite well,
Speaker 1: its economy actually grew in unlike most of the world,
Speaker 1: and it actually grew faster than Somehow, US economy of
Speaker 1: course shrank in. But then if you look down at Peru,
Speaker 1: which had pretty severe lockdowns and it was really impacted
Speaker 1: by the virus, Peru's economy shrank more than eleven percent
Speaker 1: in one of the biggest drops in GDP in the world.
Speaker 1: If you look at it, it's really country by country. Again,
Speaker 1: we're still getting the data. We don't know exactly where
Speaker 1: this is all going to end up. But one area
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in is South America and Latin America.
Speaker 1: Why is Latin America so interesting too? Before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we had a situation where inequality was getting worse than
Speaker 1: a lot of Western countries. One of the questions we
Speaker 1: had was where is this all headed. If you look
Speaker 1: at Latin America, these are middle income countries and they
Speaker 1: have a level of an equality that is about the
Speaker 1: same as Sub Saharan Africa, places that are much much poorer.
Speaker 1: So you have a situation where in Brazil, for example,
Speaker 1: you have almost half the wealth of the country is
Speaker 1: owned by the top one percent. In the United States,
Speaker 1: it's about a third. But the question was, are the
Speaker 1: US and other rich countries on the way to that
Speaker 1: same kind of level of inequality? Are we going to
Speaker 1: also maybe have the same kind of extreme polity x
Speaker 1: and extreme gaps in society they seem to go along
Speaker 1: with high inequality. So it's basically a cautionary tale. Ben
Speaker 1: mentioned Brazil. It's one of the most unequal countries in
Speaker 1: one of the most unequal regions in the world. So
Speaker 1: that's the first place we're going this season, specifically to Brazilia.
Speaker 1: It's the capital and it also happens to be the
Speaker 1: most unequal place in the country. My colleague Shannon Sims,
Speaker 1: an editor at Bloomberg, lives there and is giving us
Speaker 1: the view on the ground. Well, I first moved to
Speaker 1: Brazil back in two thousand and twelve. When I got here,
Speaker 1: it felt like a totally different country. There was a
Speaker 1: sense at that time that the middle class called classes
Speaker 1: was completely booming, So families were booking Disney World vacations,
Speaker 1: and they were investing in real estate, they were opening
Speaker 1: new businesses. In two thousand nine, the Economist magazine published
Speaker 1: an iconic cover story that showed the famous Christ the
Speaker 1: Redeemer statute taking off like a rocket, and the headline read,
Speaker 1: Brazil takes off Latin America's success story. By two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: things had already started moving in the other direction. Growth
Speaker 1: was slowing down, the currency was hurting, and then the
Speaker 1: pandemic hit, and it hit really hard. More than six
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand people here have died so far,
Speaker 1: but the impact on the daily lives of braziliance has
Speaker 1: also been really startling. There are lots of things I
Speaker 1: could point to to show how bad things are, like
Speaker 1: how the Hayal plunged in value almost overnight in March,
Speaker 1: and how Brazilians have loaded up on debt that they
Speaker 1: can't keep up with. The average credit card interest rate
Speaker 1: here has hit almost three hundred and fifty. But there's
Speaker 1: one big, big group of people who we don't often
Speaker 1: hear about and who have had it particularly bad during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, single moms. Ever since I moved to Brazil,
Speaker 1: I've been struck by the number of single mothers here.
Speaker 1: Current estimates suggest that there could be as many as
Speaker 1: twenty million single moms in Brazil. That's close to the
Speaker 1: entire population of Australia. The trend is only increasing. The
Speaker 1: number of birth certificates registered without a father jumped by
Speaker 1: about over the past year, which indicates the group is growing.
Speaker 1: Before COVID, single mom has already had it tough with
Speaker 1: trying to sort out childcare, taking unpaying fathers to court,
Speaker 1: commuting to jobs they were lucky to have in a
Speaker 1: tough market. They seem like they were barely hanging on
Speaker 1: in a precarious position, almost like an underclass. COVID, it seemed,
Speaker 1: would have only made their struggle harder and only widened
Speaker 1: the distance between their reality and how they'd like their
Speaker 1: lives to be. So to better understand just how these
Speaker 1: women are managing in the wake of COVID, I followed
Speaker 1: one woman, a thirty five year old mother of two
Speaker 1: named Hanata, through her day, which starts before dawn at
Speaker 1: five am. It's still dark when I pull up to
Speaker 1: Hanata's house. She's opening the gate for me and immediately
Speaker 1: starts blurting out how she's grappling with a dilemma already. Clusion. Today,
Speaker 1: we got a problem. My kids will go to school
Speaker 1: this morning. There's going to be a teachers strike, so
Speaker 1: they won't go. Teachers are striking for better pay here
Speaker 1: and some Umbaya, a working class satellite city on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Brazilia. So rather than drop her kids off
Speaker 1: at school on the way to work like she normally would,
Speaker 1: she's happy to set up Plan B. They'll stay at
Speaker 1: home until they walk alone to their after school programs.
Speaker 1: Fourteen year old Juan is learning trombone and nine year
Speaker 1: old Hailani likes dance and Notaza rummages through their backpacks,
Speaker 1: checking to make sure they have what they need for
Speaker 1: the day. As they stir in their beds, she wishes
Speaker 1: them a good morning. Oh. As she gets ready for work,
Speaker 1: she makes sure to leave some dinner on the stove
Speaker 1: as well. That's because she won't get back before nine
Speaker 1: pm tonight, hopefully in time to pull up the covers
Speaker 1: on her kids as they get in bed, but maybe not,
Speaker 1: and not to course coffee from a brown thermis. As
Speaker 1: she eyes the time on her phone, she's got to
Speaker 1: be out the door when her alarm rings in about
Speaker 1: five minutes. She works from seven thirty to five thirty
Speaker 1: every day and a big glass government building in the
Speaker 1: heart of Brazilia a forty five minute drive away. She's
Speaker 1: called a colpea, a cup lady, and she serves little
Speaker 1: sugary cups of coffee to government officials all day long.
Speaker 1: The people in suits who drink her coffee are the
Speaker 1: same officials making the kinds of decisions that can change
Speaker 1: the lives of Hanata and other single moms overnight women
Speaker 1: who are just trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 1: by in the wake of the pandemic. Despite their numbers,
Speaker 1: single mothers are also one of the segments of the
Speaker 1: population that most often get left behind. The National Statistics
Speaker 1: Agency here reports that sixty three percent of households led
Speaker 1: by single moms are living below the poverty line. For
Speaker 1: those living above the poverty line, like Hanata, the unforeseen
Speaker 1: arrival of the pandemic and now it's economic fallout are
Speaker 1: threatening to pull her under. To avoid that plummet, she's
Speaker 1: had to pivot, and so she is piled on top
Speaker 1: of her regular coffee lady job. A hodgepodge assortment of
Speaker 1: side hustles, jobs that are what economists might call part
Speaker 1: of the gig economy. As a pandemic has worn on,
Speaker 1: she's added more and more, and so now there's hardly
Speaker 1: a minute in her day when she's not workings. Fessile
Speaker 1: me the SA could think only time to get out
Speaker 1: the door. Hanata says COVID has turned her life upside down.
Speaker 1: She said she's been backed into taking on these extra
Speaker 1: jobs just to keep pace with the cost of living.
Speaker 1: As she darts around the house, quickly packing up for
Speaker 1: the day, she tells me how she's battling to keep
Speaker 1: above the welfare line because she doesn't want her family's
Speaker 1: finances left to the whims of government assistance. In just
Speaker 1: the past year, consumer prices have risen more than ten
Speaker 1: percent here, and the most recent inflation forecasts show that
Speaker 1: trend's only going to get worse. Nowhere has been spared
Speaker 1: by the economic impact of COVID, but in brazz Ill,
Speaker 1: the shutdowns disruption to the supply chain was compounded by
Speaker 1: extreme drought conditions that ruined crops last year, and that
Speaker 1: was before Brusha's invasion of Ukraine made everything worse the result,
Speaker 1: the price of a tomato doubled over a period of months,
Speaker 1: along with so many other staples. The value of the
Speaker 1: local currency started evaporating amid all the turmoil, and soon
Speaker 1: and not that went from serving fresh salads to her
Speaker 1: kids to not being able to afford anything beyond rice
Speaker 1: and beans. Nya sena sini fister doesn't size, they say,
Speaker 1: saints it since basic bacasco guys gazolin the basics. Today
Speaker 1: you can't. It's six hundred seven hund the highs, the basics,
Speaker 1: the most basic of the basics. So the cost of
Speaker 1: living through Brazilians due to COVID, due to the war,
Speaker 1: due to everything that's happening, the cost of living increased
Speaker 1: a lot. Really you a lot? No. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not impossible to manage as a single mom, but it
Speaker 1: is complicated. As we get into her car, I noticed
Speaker 1: the gas gage shows that we have less than a
Speaker 1: quarter tank. It seems a little low for us to
Speaker 1: get all the way into the city. I don't know,
Speaker 1: as Scotts. Now we're going to pick up Dona Halsa
Speaker 1: and she's a warrior woman to you know, to make
Speaker 1: a little extra cash. One of Hanata's side hustles is
Speaker 1: driving a woman named Dona Josa for a flat feed.
Speaker 1: Hanata met her when she ubered her home one night,
Speaker 1: and as it would turn out, Donal Hols is a
Speaker 1: single mom, herself a mask that a hole. It's been
Speaker 1: years that I get up at four am. It's been
Speaker 1: years I raised my kids and this ridom. Hanata, who
Speaker 1: still has her eye on the time, instructs Dona Halsa
Speaker 1: to put on her seatbelt as Halsa hands her thirty
Speaker 1: hay eyes. Dona host is a small woman in her
Speaker 1: sixties from the northern Brazilian state of It's one of
Speaker 1: the poorest in the country and the kind of hot,
Speaker 1: desperate place where they say only the strong survive. Dona
Speaker 1: Holsa carries that battle faced spirit with her. I'm from
Speaker 1: I got here in seventy five. When we got here,
Speaker 1: we would roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Speaker 1: She raised her children on her own, but as she
Speaker 1: tells me, things are worse today than she's ever seen them.
Speaker 1: Hosa works as a housekeeper and one of the richer
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of Brazilia called where organic grocery stores and cocktail
Speaker 1: bars and fancy playgrounds for the kids line the blocks.
Speaker 1: She's worked for the same family for more than five years,
Speaker 1: but since COVID began, they cut back her days from
Speaker 1: five to two per week, so she used to make
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty eyes per week. Now she's paid
Speaker 1: three d And there's a big catch. They told her
Speaker 1: they don't want her taking the bus because she'll have
Speaker 1: too much exposure to the virus and can bring it
Speaker 1: into their house. That way, if she wants to keep working,
Speaker 1: she has to take an uber and she has to
Speaker 1: pay for it. As a result, the cost of her
Speaker 1: daily commute increased tenfold, and Haulsa is not happy about it.
Speaker 1: Last last, she should be paying part of my fair
Speaker 1: I think she had the obligation to pay, don't you think?
Speaker 1: But no, I pay with the tiny bit that I learned.
Speaker 1: Hanata and Paulsa dive into a heated conversation about how
Speaker 1: COVID has underlined inequality here, I no sabe somewhere LETI
Speaker 1: rich thing that COVID only comes from poor people. So
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let the cleaning woman come because she
Speaker 1: could bring it to me. But they don't think about
Speaker 1: the fact that the people who actually bring the virus
Speaker 1: are those who travel around everywhere will take plane to
Speaker 1: go to other countries. We'll just stay in our little world.
Speaker 1: We just go downtown, back home, downtown, back home. We
Speaker 1: don't leave the house. The fact that rich employers view
Speaker 1: people like Hanata and Donna Haza as the source of
Speaker 1: infection is especially going to Hanata because of how the
Speaker 1: outbreak happened here. At the beginning of the pandemic, there
Speaker 1: was a major super spreader event a luxury beach resort
Speaker 1: called Frangozo. It put on display how the wealth He's
Speaker 1: jet setting lifestyle was contributing to the outbreak. Meanwhile, Hanata
Speaker 1: has never traveled outside of the city. In fact, she's
Speaker 1: only able to travel as far as her gas tank
Speaker 1: can take her. We pull up to the gas station
Speaker 1: and Hanna to ask the attendant for thirty he eyes
Speaker 1: worth the gas. I realized the thirty hey eyes Josa
Speaker 1: gave her earlier is the exact amount Hanata needs to
Speaker 1: get them into Brazilia this morning, and not just constantly
Speaker 1: on the hunt for cheap fuel, which is getting harder
Speaker 1: to find. Petro Bras, the state oil giant, increased prices
Speaker 1: by nearly in mid March. Now Brazil has some of
Speaker 1: the most expensive gas in the world, and since she
Speaker 1: can only afford a little bit at a time, she
Speaker 1: has developed this finely tuned sense of exactly how much
Speaker 1: she'll need in the tank to get her to the
Speaker 1: next destination before the cardpt have meals she has, but
Speaker 1: COVID it has gotten worse. We could buy things then
Speaker 1: that we can only buy now. Working double the hours
Speaker 1: because the price of everything increased also jumps out America.
Speaker 1: Just watch what happens when I go to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: I can't even buy a killo off chicken compan It's complicated.
Speaker 1: This is the reality for Brazilians, a choke hold. Every day.
Speaker 1: Hanata drops Holsa off and heads to the government ministry.
Speaker 1: Ten hours later, I meet her as she's getting out.
Speaker 1: Why as she's walking to her car, I asked her
Speaker 1: how her day went, But I noticed her mood has shifted.
Speaker 1: When I left her at work, she was a chipper.
Speaker 1: Now she seems like she's forcing a smile, and I
Speaker 1: soon discover she's actually furious. One alone, just get out
Speaker 1: of his front of the face. I'm going to send
Speaker 1: an audio message and let's see if to answer me.
Speaker 1: Because the son of the owner is ignoring me. He
Speaker 1: is ignoring all of us. I've got to call quickly
Speaker 1: because the office is about to close. She sits down
Speaker 1: on the driver's seat and almost immediately starts sending a
Speaker 1: firm but polite voice note to her former employer. The
Speaker 1: company owes her seventy eyes. That is week's overdue for Hanata.
Speaker 1: That's a month and a half pay missing from her
Speaker 1: bank account. It's not the only problem she's dealing with.
Speaker 1: She's also taking the father of one of her kids
Speaker 1: to court for not paying child support, money she desperately needs.
Speaker 1: And throughout the day she's had to be checking in
Speaker 1: on her kids because they're home alone. But she doesn't
Speaker 1: have time to worry about all that now, not when
Speaker 1: she could be making money driving Uber her new pandemic job.
Speaker 1: She's got four to six more hours of work ahead
Speaker 1: of her. What did Let's go ahead and turn on
Speaker 1: the app. Let's work and make some money. Hanata had
Speaker 1: never considered driving an uber before until the pandemic made
Speaker 1: it necessary. She needed a quick way to start making
Speaker 1: money to keep up with a surge and costs of food.
Speaker 1: A friend suggested buying a car and paying it off
Speaker 1: by driving Uber, except now costs of increase even higher
Speaker 1: than she imagined, So she's locked into having to drive
Speaker 1: Uber as much as she possibly can, and so she
Speaker 1: can barely hold her eyes open just to not fall
Speaker 1: behind on her carpet at it. Sometimes I leave work
Speaker 1: and say I'm not going to drive today because I
Speaker 1: am not in the right head space. But then I
Speaker 1: think I will have to drive around because I've got
Speaker 1: this carnet and everything else to pay. She starts to
Speaker 1: pull up to a gas station, but sees the price
Speaker 1: and swerves back one of the road. Did she about
Speaker 1: the second month geez for already increased the price of gas? Shoot,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to fill up here. Riding around all
Speaker 1: day made me realize she'd been holding her life together
Speaker 1: by a thread, and then COVID came and took all
Speaker 1: these tenuous situations and just stretched her to the breaking point.
Speaker 1: Things were never ze for Hanata. And then COVID came
Speaker 1: along and threatened to snap all of those fragile strings
Speaker 1: that Hanata was tying together. Job market disruptions from shutdowns
Speaker 1: and supply chain breakdowns that led to inflation. It all
Speaker 1: meant that Hanata's options for work got smaller, even while
Speaker 1: she had to work more and more to keep up
Speaker 1: with prices. In the aftermath of the pandemic, Hanata is
Speaker 1: facing down economic forces that are too much for even
Speaker 1: a self described geheira or warrior woman, and not as
Speaker 1: a hustler. But she's working to her max. And she's
Speaker 1: just one woman, just one mom, in a place where
Speaker 1: there are twenty million like her, each of them just
Speaker 1: trying to sort out a way to get by in
Speaker 1: this new, harsh, increasingly unequal world. It's starting to get
Speaker 1: dark out and she's running low on gas as always.
Speaker 1: Let me see how much it is here. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's going up everywhere. Just because the government said they're
Speaker 1: going to lower the price of gasoline. They say the
Speaker 1: station increased the price of gasoline. There's really screwing us.
Speaker 1: During Hanata's Uber shift, she drives from Asasul to Asanoichi,
Speaker 1: from one nice neighborhood to another, bringing people home from
Speaker 1: work to their families. She tells me how driving uber
Speaker 1: gives her a unique window and to other people's lives.
Speaker 1: She says she sees people Austin showing off every weekend.
Speaker 1: Maybe says it's a trip on the yacht or drinks
Speaker 1: or women or drugs. Meanwhile, a lot of people are
Speaker 1: experiencing hunger. Inequality is on her mind that she goes
Speaker 1: from one ride to the next. Stine vivan Pi Social East. No,
Speaker 1: capitalist in equality is enormous. We don't live in a
Speaker 1: socialist country. We live in a capitalist country where the
Speaker 1: rich would always be on top and the lower class
Speaker 1: will be at the bottom of the well. Her uber
Speaker 1: rights also make her think about her own life in
Speaker 1: limitations on the open back downing Elias, that's a suging
Speaker 1: Ways school. Yesterday I went to pick up a young
Speaker 1: person at one of those English language schools in the
Speaker 1: South Zone, and I thought, Wow, my daughter is never
Speaker 1: going to be able to attend a school like this
Speaker 1: with the money I make. I looked it up. A
Speaker 1: year of tuition at that school cost more than fourteen
Speaker 1: tho US dollars per year, and not just total income
Speaker 1: is less than half that. My fast we think, don't
Speaker 1: The photoco was mostly if there are days when I'm
Speaker 1: totally wiped out because I have three jobs and I
Speaker 1: have my kids and run the household, and I can't disappoint.
Speaker 1: She continues driving along the way. She passes the modern monuments,
Speaker 1: the hulking shopping malls, the Congress Building, and the Presidential Palace.
Speaker 1: If she's lucky, she drives across one of Brazilia's postcard
Speaker 1: bridges at sunset. I was seeing something I like a
Speaker 1: lot as well. It's when I passed by the side
Speaker 1: of the lake. I always stopped to look at the
Speaker 1: horizon over the water and thank God. No that. Oh,
Speaker 1: she's arriving home at nine thirty pm tonight, But she
Speaker 1: could work longer. If she does eleven more rides, she'd
Speaker 1: get a hundred and twenty he eyes of incentive bay
Speaker 1: about US dollars today, though she makes the tough choice
Speaker 1: to forego that money so she can see her kids
Speaker 1: before they go to sleep. Yeah, she gets home and
Speaker 1: they have a family dinner, a late one. After she
Speaker 1: sends them to wash up and get ready for bed,
Speaker 1: she does the dishes and sets the alarm for five am.
Speaker 1: The pandemics toll on Brazil and people like Hannada is
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario, a widening divide between the rich
Speaker 1: and everyone else, which has made daily life a struggle
Speaker 1: for many people. But there's another issue. Something then and
Speaker 1: I talked about the real question is is there sort
Speaker 1: of a natural spot that inequality heads a capitalist society,
Speaker 1: Like over time, do we naturally become more and more
Speaker 1: unequal up to a certain level until something comes along
Speaker 1: and stops it, or can we do things policy things
Speaker 1: that will prevent inequality from getting to that point or
Speaker 1: from or reverse it so that without having a revolution,
Speaker 1: Like it would be nice if we could have a
Speaker 1: more equal society without having the kind of disruption that
Speaker 1: World War Two, for example, brought along, or or the
Speaker 1: pandemics of the Middle Ages brought along. Next week on
Speaker 1: the Paycheck, we had to be part of the world
Speaker 1: where wealth and equality actually reversed. For one simple reason,
Speaker 1: poor and low income people got a lot of no
Speaker 1: strings attached cash. The first emotion I feel, I remember
Speaker 1: it was like almost disbelief, like me I got, like
Speaker 1: my name never gets Thanks for listening to The Paycheck.
Speaker 1: If you like our show, please how to over to
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or We're where you listen to rate, review
Speaker 1: and subscribe. This episode was hosted by Me Rebecca Greenfield
Speaker 1: and reported by Me, Shannon Sims, and Ben Steve Verman.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Francesca Levi with help from Janet Paskin,
Speaker 1: Rocksheeta Saluja and Me. We also had editing help from
Speaker 1: Daniel Balby, Shelley Banjo, Kristin V. Brown, Nicole Flato, Gilda
Speaker 1: to Carly, Elissa McDonald, and Kai Schultz. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Gilda to Carly and sound engineered by Matt
Speaker 1: kim Our. Original music is by Leo Sidrin. The voiceovers
Speaker 1: you heard were by Camilla Fontana and Isadora Colombi. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Magnus Hendrickson, Mckinninda Keeper, Margaret Sutherland, Stacy Wong,
Speaker 1: and Aisha Diallo. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1: See you next week.