Global Journal of Human Social Science, E: Economics, Volume 23 Issue 3

For social assistance, the tendency to definance was deepened, both in terms of cutting social benefits and in reducing social assistance services. Salvador (2018) shows that between 2016 and 2018 there was a cancellation of social benefits that amount to 10 billion reais (among them are the Bolsa Familia [Family Grant], auxílio doença [sickness support] and auxílio por invalidez [disability support]). With this, 5.7 million people lost benefits (out of these 5.2 million people lost the Bolsa Família ). Data from Boschetti and Teixeira (2019) indicate that, within the scope of the Ministry of Social and Agrarian Development (MDSA), since 2015, there has been a reduction of resources aimed at the “ Bolsa Familia Program”. Between 2014 and 2017, this reduction reached 14.4%. As for social assistance services, the values transferred to the services decreased by 38.6%, with a drop from R$ 2.6 billion in 2012 to R$ 1.6 billion in 2018. (BOSCHETTI; TEIXEIRA, 2019). Regarding the work precariousness, Silveira Junior (2019) helps us illustrate the situation by showing that recently there was an important recomposition of the relative overpopulation, in order to leverage the rates of surplus value, both from an exponential rise in unemployment and informality. According to the author, the average annual unemployment rate doubled in Brazil in 2017 (12.7%), compared to 2014 (6.8%) - according to continuous PNAD - which indicates that there are 13.2 million people without employment, a 96.2% jump since 2014. In addition, a loss of jobs with a signed portfolio (and guarantees) is added and the increase in new occupations was absorbed mainly by sectors traditionally characterized by informality, where low wages and precarious and unstable conditions prevail (self-employment, auxiliary family work, and in the private sector without a carteira de trabalho [employment record card]). This was the preparatory ground for Bolsonaro’s government. Fueled by the 2016 coup, the advance of the far right wing, commanded by the bourgeoisie and parts of the middle class led to the election in 2018 of an ultraneolliberal government in the economy, conservative and reactionary in the social, in values and customs and increasingly authoritarian in politics and in the pursuit of social struggles, with an even more accelerated advance of the offensive against social rights. Even the income transfer, focused and minimalist, underwent cuts: in the Bolsa Familia Program, about 1.1 million families were disconnected from the program between May 2019 and January 2020, outside the expected waiting queue that already had approximately 1.7 million families (SILVA, 2020). An even harder blow against work came with the new pension reform (Constitutional Amendment 06/2019), which provided for the working class to work longer, further usurping the workers’ living fund. The World Health Organization declared on March 11 th , 2020 that the proliferation of the new coronavirus was a pandemic. At that time, 118 thousand cases were already registered in 114 countries, with 4291 deaths due to the disease (MOREIRA et al, 2020, page 7). The outbreak of the pandemic and the unprecedented global health crisis came in addition to the economic crisis that brought consequences of the crisis started in 2007/2008, associated with neoliberal deepening, since the economy has since been showing insufficient profitability rates, low productivity growth and little dynamism in investments, reverberating in finance, which expressed lower profitability compared to the immediately preceding period. (LAPAVITSAS, 2020) With the beginning of the pandemic and the violent fall in stock exchanges worldwide, in March 2020, the scenario became worse due to the interruption of circulation and productive processes, in view of social distancing measures enacted in several countries, as a measure of containment to the pandemic, associated with the increase of geopolitical tensions, mainly between the US and China, which continue to dispute hegemony in the technological, commercial and financial field. As a direct consequence of the reduction of production and drop in demand, along with the uncertainty in this pandemic situation, unemployment has increased and the most devastating repercussions occur for the segments most precarious by neoliberal policies in recent decades: informal, autonomous, intermittent, underutilized, outsourced workers, that is, precisely those who do not have social protection guaranteed by the State and only receive some remuneration when they work (ANTUNES, 2020). This has stripped the capitalist destructiveness, because it shows the limits of the irrational management of capitalism on economy, society and nature, whose consequences have left hundreds of thousands dead. From the beginning of the pandemic until December 2022, it registered 693,853 deaths, out of a total of 36,331,281 accumulated cases (DATASUS). Although we consider the severity and depth of the crisis in the face of the pandemic, it is worth “emphasizing that COVID-19 itself is not an ‘external agent’ and that it would not exist and/or would not have the same consequences outside the capitalist system” (GOUVEA, 2020, page 21). Scientists studying the new epidemics (SARS – Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Ebola, the various types of influenzae, among other pathogens) point to their relationship with capitalist economic development and show that they started in regions of accelerated urbanization and industrialization. In this sense, coping with the disease was also organically linked to capitalist reproduction, which is experiencing a moment of reconfiguration and radicalization of neoliberalism. Therefore, among the most serious results of the pandemic are the negative © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 32 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( )E Expropriation of Rights, Dependent Capitalism and Transfer of Income: Reflections on the Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic