Speaking as a Brazilian - the country is an odd one. If you go by GDP it should be a rich country but it just isn't.

It's rightly classified as an emergent country. It has deep social and poverty problems that needs addressing even though it's a regional economic force.

Brazil is definitely capitalist but it's hard to do business there - 144th place in economic freedom index.

> If you go by GDP it should be a rich country

Not really. GDP is large, but that's only because the population is large. Per capita GDP is around US$ 9k, which makes us poorer than Mexico or Argentina. For comparison, per capita GDP in Sweden is something like US$ 54k.

I remember being taught in school that Brazil is the n-th richest country in the world, and if only that wealth were evenly distributed we could all enjoy a welfare state like in Europe. That is simply not possible. But I guess many people here still believe it because the country has a few highly visible pockets of wealth.

Comparing to Sweden is a bit extreme. Portugal's comparable GDP is 24k. It's still a factor of 3x but a lot of the costs in a welfare state scale with the wealth of the economy as they are just directly cost of labor. Having a reasonable welfare state, that's not world-class but isn't the US either, should be possible.

Yes, Brazil is practically halfway between Portugal and Angola. It's half the GDP per capita of Portugal, but twice that of Angola: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Brazil is a country of contrasts. If you are upper middle class, you more or less live in a "Portugal", have excellent healthcare, your kids go to good schools and your retirement will be comfortable. If you are below a certain line, things get worse very quickly until you reach the poorest rural regions where you live effectively like the poorest people in the world.

Brazil should be wealthy. It has every advantage, huge amount of resources, no natural enemies ...

Resource curse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

But it also has 3rd world demographics. AFAIK Asian / Jewish / White Brazilians hold significantly more wealth than the Pardo and Black populations.