To understand the history of Brasil is to begin to explain how things got the way they are now. Growing up in Canada I felt privileged to come from a pioneer family that settled to conqueror a resource rich land. Legends of the gold started the history but later wealth was derived from fishing and logging.
Before the end of the Industrial Age every type of millionaire was spawned in Canada and I knew many. I grew up with the son of the Premier and played with the richest and most powerful people of Western Canada, I came to understand the big fish in the small pond but not until I migrated to Australia and experienced the lifestyle of the rich and famous of the Gold Coast, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne.
The days of realization were in my early 20's, I had a penchant for sailing mega yachts and hung around with very fast people but still, as a Canuck (my nickname at the time) I felt that the mountains and splendor of Canada put me in a slightly higher bracket, although I must admit that the beaches and Barrier Reef of Australia were something for which I knew there was no reckoning. Even back in those days I heard the elite talk about Offshore Banking and plans for avoiding taxes. Actually, I had my first encounters with Sovereign Living back in those days but that's another story.
The point to my story is this; after having lived in the wealthiest parts of first Western and then later Eastern Canada or "Upper Canada" as it was once known, and after a radical downturn in the economy migrating to South Florida, Boca Raton to be precise, to witness an entirely new stratosphere of wealthy people, one of which I thought there was no rival - until Brasil.
To put Brasil into perspective it's important to know that the 5th largest country in land mass has more natural resources than the four previous countries combined. With 185 million people to provide a local market this country could thrive even if the rest of the world went to hell in a hand basket but what's important to know, for the sake of this conversation, is that Brasil has the worst distribution of wealth of any country in the world, that's hard to do on a per-capita basis, for a country of this population. Yes, less than 10% of the citizens hold over 90% of the wealth.
Now back to the history. Brasil has just turned 500 years old, whereas Canada is only a young 250 but significant to this fact is that during the entire history the inhabitants were well trained to extracts as much wealth as possible from the land, people and markets and ship it to somewhere safe outside of South America where your family dynasty could get access for centuries to come.
Well, now that we're living in the information age, it might be considered that the modern day aristocrats of Brasil are some of the most savvy offshore bank account holders in the world. Surely the massive wealth derived from selling the most coffee, sugar, cocoa and soy (amongst other commodities) isn't repatriated back to this land of milk and honey. Although, the rich here make the people of Palm Beach in Florida look like Canadians and still leave the bulk of cash offshore.
