Why had americans developed a “tradition of waste”?

for starters, there is the structural trend of rising primary government expenditure as a share of gdp, which reached 36% in 2014, up from 22% in 1991. this increase reflected a political desire to address the poverty and inequality that had gone unaddressed during previous decades. to support the increase, brazil’s government increased taxes on consumption and promoted progress toward labor-market formalization. nonetheless, public investment, particularly in infrastructure, took a hit. in fact, with the exception of the 2005-2008 period, total investment as a share of gdp has remained below 20% since 1991.

for this case we have the following equation:

we apply distributive property to the terms within parentheses.

subtracting 2 on both sides of the equation: