Word: portos
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...both the state administrators supported by traditional Keynesians and the entrepreneurs favored by economic libertarians, contemporary innovators of redistribution emphasize the role of the public as a third actor in shaping economic life. One example that they often point to is the participatory budgetary process of the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. The process, which was first implemented in 1989, encouraged all citizens to take part in constructing the city’s budget. Over the past two decades, thousands of citizens have participated annually in formulating the municipality’s economic priorities...
...city has utilized the participatory budget process since 1989, and there have been clearly progressive social effects: The number of schools has quadrupled since 1986; Porto Alegre’s health and education budget increased from 13 percent in 1985 to almost 40 percent in 1996; sewer and water connections in the city of Porto Alegre went up from 75 percent of total households in 1988 to 98 percent in 1997. The number of participants in the budget process grew from less than 1,000 per year in 1990 to more than 16000 in 1998 and is presently around...
Additionally, the influential Brazilian business journal “Exame” has regularly nominated Porto Alegre as the Brazilian city with the best quality of life based on the following indicators: “literacy, enrollment in elementary and secondary education, quality of higher and postgraduate education, per capita consumption, employment, child mortality, life expectancy, number of hospital beds, housing, sewage, airports, highways, crime rate, restaurants, and climate.” The success of this innovative budget process has made Porto Alegre a model for an alternative form of economic distribution...
This novel methodology is also innovative at a personal level: Participatory democracy in Porto Alegre is “expressive” in the sense that it gives each individual the opportunity to collectively articulate his or her own original contribution to society. Rather than imagine democracy simply as a rationalized process, the citizens of the city perceive democracy to be a form of self-fulfillment: The public is given the opportunity to express its ingenuity, experience, and knowledge by tackling the most important questions that society faces. The implicit philosophy is that through the process of public deliberation each...
...care hullabaloo, constituents have other things to worry about. The first question after McMahon's speech was about the rising cost of living, the next about offshore drilling and the third about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm this way about the health care bill," says Anna Porto, 80, a retired clerk, wagging her index and middle fingers in opposite directions. "I like that it helps the uninsured, but I don't like that we're paying for it. We can't afford it right now - we can't afford anything...