The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:24:01 · Brian Winter
[00:24:01] S3: This was another scandal that when it broke splashed onto... I mean not everybody, but close. You know, politicians, business leaders, all across the political spectrum were wrapped up in that corruption scheme. Yeah. We've seen something happen similarly this year, another scandal that seemed to be connected to everybody. The path to changing that over the longer term is hard because these are systems that take root over long periods of time. And I guess for me one of the takeaways is it's hard to build a judicial system that works. Yeah. And that applies justice equally. You know, we're never perfect, but I think Brazil's got some work to do on that front. As far as its impact on the election, it's very again, and I'm sorry to sort of weave a bit around this question, but it's hard to speak about in absolute terms because it seemed at various points during this campaign like corruption was the number one issue for voters. Like this was what people were really watching and reacting to. And then at the end it was as if the narrative changed and people became more focused on the culture wars, on pocketbook issues, you know worries about Brazilian democracy if the Bolsonaro family were to return to power. You know the bottom line is don't blink because the focus of a campaign and the narrative of a campaign in the age of smartphones, in the age of social media can change so fast. I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen momentum change as dramatically, as quickly as I did in this Brazilian race, and I don't think that was just because it was Brazil. Right. I think this has to do with, you know, with the way politics are now. When I visited Brazil on several occasions in 2026, I was struck by how hard it was to find anyone who was excited about either candidate. And so I think that was a dynamic where, you know, you had people who were declaring who they wanted to vote for to pollsters and others, but they weren't as sure as we thought they
00:26:37 · Laura Jáner, Brian Winter
[00:26:37] S2: were. Mhmm. [00:26:38] S3: And so, you know, maybe that's maybe that's another broader lesson as well.
00:26:43 · Laura Jáner
[00:26:43] S2: Totally. I'd love to come back to The US parallels. And I'll start with one that I'll pose, which is the vibe session, a term that's kinda used in in The US. And I think it applies to Brazil because on paper, Lula's economy seemed to be doing well. You know, unemployment was was low and wages were growing, but Brazilians don't feel it. In a September poll, 49% of Brazilians said the economy had gotten worse over the past year and only 19% said it had gotten better and Americans truly will recognize this from the Biden years. And... But, I mean, on the unemployment point, a lot of the explanation is what kind of jobs those are. Nearly four in 10 Brazilian workers are in the informal economy, and almost 2,000,000 now drive or deliver full time for apps like Uber and other delivery apps, mostly because they couldn't find another job. And the Financial Times had a recent article about this where they described it as the Uberization of Brazil. So, I mean, the low unemployment number, least, we can't take at face value. And another part is the debt. A record of nearly 84,000,000 Brazilians are behind other payments in some of the... At some of the highest interest rates in the world. I would love to know how, like, you square sort of these... The the headline numbers that, you know, growth was fine and, you know, the situation wasn't as dire with what voters seem to be telling posters. And how much do you think this economy sort of factored into the election at least compared with maybe corruption like we were talking about? Do you think this is a fair comparison at least with the with The US?
00:28:14 · Brian Winter, Laura Jáner
[00:28:14] S3: Oh, I do. I mean, look. I think there are two main issues at work here. The first one is that people struggle. Yeah. And jobs are not as high quality as they used to be. Traditionally, certainly when Lula was coming up in politics, the pathway to the middle class in Brazil lied with a formal sector job, usually in a factory, usually in industry. In fact Lula's party, the workers party, is built around that idea. [00:28:51] S2: Yeah. [00:28:51] S3: The trade unions that were so strong in the nineteen seventies and eighties. But as elsewhere, including The United States, industry in Brazil has eroded. Values have changed somewhat, and it's happened in a relatively short period of time. When I was a reporter living in Sao Paulo during the first half of the twenty ten's, that was still an era where people were so proud to have a Cartera Sinada. [00:29:23] S2: Yeah.
00:29:23 · Brian Winter
[00:29:23] S3: Which means in English that's like a assigned notebook. And it's the little notebook where if you have a formal sector job, your employer provides a written record that you have that job and then and then signs it. And for a generation of Brazilians this was their maximum aspiration. Not only did it mean a certain economic prosperity or at least safety, but it was also a source of prestige and pride in a lot of segments of the working class to have that kind of job. Well, today, not only have a lot of those jobs disappeared because of competition mainly from China, but also Brazilians in polls say that they would rather work for themselves. And that is a big change in the span of about ten years. So while it's true that yes, some people are making ends meet through Uber and through other gig work, Some of that is by necessity. Yeah. But a lot of it is by choice. And the Bolsonaro family appeared to have benefited from that switch until, you know, in the end it was not enough for them to get elected. The other point I would make just regarding the parallels is, you know, the economic forces at work in Brazil are very similar to what we saw in the twenty twenty four election here in The United States, where at first President Biden and later Vice President Harris seemed kind of disoriented by the amount of dissatisfaction out there in the world because the headline numbers of the economy were good. As you noted, Brazilian unemployment is at an all time low. Inflation is also under control at about 4%. But there are a variety of other things happening within the economy, including very very high interest rates that mean that affordability is really a concern. And it's been funny to see Brazilian newspapers over the course of this year use the English word affordability when they're talking about this subject, and yet more proof of how some of these ideas and agendas get passed back and forth between our countries.
00:31:47 · Laura Jáner
[00:31:47] S2: Definitely. For a lot of Brazilians, this felt like another, like I said before, an election between the lesser of two evils. Right? People didn't seem excited, like you said, about either candidate. In a way, it's felt like that for for several cycles now, especially as Lula has been candidate for many elections in the past decades. But there is a sense of, like, disillusionment at least with with Brazilian politics and kind of especially with both the right and the left's failure to produce sort of like more moderate candidates. And Brazil still struggles as kind of a stagnated country and and with full growth, etcetera. But would you say you are bullish on Brazil?