Government-Created Poverty; J.P. Martino

THEmEEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY GOVERNMENT-CREATED POVERTY by Joseph P. Martino E very morning, outside my apartment building, I see a woman sweeping the sidewalk. She wields her broom briskly, marshaling the scraps of paper and dead leaves into an orderly pile. She then sweeps them into a long-handled dustpan made from a cut-down salad-oil can with a broom handle nailed to it. Downtown, Sao Paolo is a clean city. It's kept that way, not only by people like the woman outside my apartment, but by an army of municipal workers, men and women, clad in safety-orange coveralls. Like the woman in front of my apartment, they wield brooms and long-handled dust pans. Their only concession to a greater volume of work is the barrel-shaped push carts into which they dump the refuse. Street cleaning is not the only labor in tensive activity I see. At a gas station, I count six pumps and four attendants in clean uniforms. Another attendant, in a different uniform, puts air in tires. I am told that there are only one or two self-service gas stations in all of Sao Paolo.

On the university campus where my office is located, there are numerous well-tended gardens. The campus seems to be covered with flowering shrubs and trees. This beauDr. Joseph P. Martino is a senior research scientist at the University of Dayton Research Institute. He was a guest lecturer last year at the Institute for Technological Research in Slio Paolo. tifullandscape is tended by a host of work ers who trim, cut, and plant by hand. The newly planted trees are watered regularly by a man who stands by them, holding a hose. The contrast with my own campus in the United States is instructive. Planting a tree on my home campus means bringing in a truck-mounted auger which digs a hole in minutes, following which a tree is dropped into the hole by another truck with a crane. Trimming the hedge in front of my building is done with a chain-saw. Leaves are cleaned off the sidewalk with a gasoline powered blower carried by one of the grounds workers.