The entire country, including the government and most companies, operate paycheck to paycheck. If you shut everything down overnight, it would be rampant chaos within a week or two. We had a couple of price freezes when I lived there and a "greve geral" that brought the country to a halt for a couple of days. The people were already in the streets and ready to escalate to voilence when they turned everything back on a day or two later. It's a very find balance to maintain order in a country as big and diverse and unstable as Brazil. And of course, the fact that the government consists of nothing but criminals who are looting the country makes it much, much worse.