Source: O Globo, 25/05/2009

Centralized planning ended in the garbage of history, but the “strong state” idea, capable of inducing development and much more, has survived as a resistant bacterium. It is true that there are key functions for the State in a modern society. Even, of course, in the economy, given the central role of central banks - their action in the current crisis is proof.

But, in the vulgate that remained of this thought, classic of the left, there was a confusion between the adjectives "strong", "efficient" and "bloated".

Not every strong state is efficient, just as a bloated state of servers is not necessarily strong, much less efficient.

The Lula government was lost in this confusion - which is not semantic.

So far, it has hired around 200 thousand civil servants, inflating the contingent of civil servants by more than 20%, in the idea that it would thus constitute a strong and efficient state. All a costly illusion.

It is enough to ascertain whether there has been any notable improvement, proportional to the swelling of the bureaucratic machine, in serving the population. The answer is "none". Or if this “strong” state manages to contain deforestation in the Amazon, clean up rivers, provide security to citizens. The answer is "no" - because the model followed by the government was that of the bloated, inefficient state.

Underlying the issue is the problem of the total cost of this civil service to society - and not just in wages, but pensions and costs in general. Ink, hours of work have been spent in Brasília to prove with supposedly irrefutable numbers that, contrary to what one might think, the contingent of civil servants is even small, as shown by comparisons with developed countries.

Now, different realities are compared, which makes sense of the evaluation itself. Cold percentages of participation of civil servants in the various labor markets cannot be considered without taking into account the level of income of each country, the respective tax burdens and the scope of action of each bureaucracy.

From this point of view, the correct one, a country with a tax burden like that of Brazil and a sheet of civil servants that is one of the main items of public expenditure - and in constant growth - has a bloated state, whose cost has become unbearable for society. Reforming this gigantic misshapen, corporatist, inefficient organism will sooner or later be one of the national priorities