Brazilian Riots Systemic

Investors Business Daily explores the causes of the riots in Brazil. The problems are systemic:

"I talk to a lot of Brazilian business-people and their complaints are pretty uniform: high taxes, shoddy services, restrictions on trade, crime," wrote one Miami attorney who does business in Brazil on Facebook. "If they could only do one thing, they really need to embrace free trade, and drop restrictions on imports."

While special interests benefit from the carrots of socialism, the broader society gets the stick.

"We work four months of the year just to pay taxes and we get nothing in return," a protester told the New York Times recently.

They also deal with 6.5% inflation, police brutality, shoddy teachers and hospital unions, and rafts of regulations and bureaucrats.

All of this is not a bug, but a feature of socialism — a socialism by so-called experts. And just like Spartan aristocrats more than 2,000 years ago, Brazil's rulers now watch, dumbfounded, as the helots revolt.