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Venezuela Looks Like Zimbabwe Did 10 Years Ago

LowDown

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They are very different cultures, but the similarities are striking:

An authoritarian government increasingly works to thwart the popular will through thuggery and violence.

The government spends money on subsidies for everything but can't pay its bills so it prints money. Inflation is rampant. They seize national corporations and then run them into the ground, destroying the economy.

If not for the black market people would starve. Price controls means goods are diverted into the black market or are sold in other countries. Subsidies that are supposed to make the price controls work are often stolen.

The official exchange rate is ten Bolivars for one American dollar. On the black market it's 1500 Bolivars per dollar. A package of soap costs 35 Bolivars officially but on the black market goes for 600. Merchants can't import goods with the income they get from the official price, so in many stores the shelves are empty. Government leaders are clueless about the relationship between price controls and the scarcity of goods. They blame it on speculators, traitors, and America.

Spot the difference | The Economist

Two people who are of the opinion that what they have is their property meet somewhere to come to a mutually beneficial agreement to trade their property. That's capitalism. It can be done anywhere, a store, a street, a back alley, and it can't be stopped. It wrecks all of any government's efforts to control the markets, so socialism or communism, taken to their theoretical maximum, will always fail.
 
It was not much better before Chavez and Co..... there it was the 1% who ruled everything, rigged elections and left 99% of the population in utter poverty and starvation. But hey at least the American companies got their cut!
 
When socialist get their hands on anything it's only a matter of time before disaster strikes.
 
It was not much better before Chavez and Co..... there it was the 1% who ruled everything, rigged elections and left 99% of the population in utter poverty and starvation. But hey at least the American companies got their cut!

99% in poverty? Nope. Maybe about half.. With Chavez the proportion in poverty dropped to 36.3%, not as dramatic as some gushing left wingers want to imply. Now, pretty much everyone is miserable.
 
Socialism is the #1 best "ism" of the world! Venezuela just didn't do it right....amirite liberals?
 
It was not much better before Chavez and Co..... there it was the 1% who ruled everything, rigged elections and left 99% of the population in utter poverty and starvation. But hey at least the American companies got their cut!

It was a LOT better before Chavez. Don't fool yourself into believing Socialism is so great..it SUCKS! What part of "People cannot get food now" don't you understand?
It's NOT "as usual", now they have NO CHOICE or extremely few.
 
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When socialist get their hands on anything it's only a matter of time before disaster strikes.

When Socialists run out of other peoples money, Socialism runs out of excuses...and self destructs spectacularly...I present Venezuela...and a HOST of other socialist nations soon to follow once they have to actually start footing the bill for their OWN national defense.

Funny how suddenly the Philippines (even though a Democratic Republic) and Vietnam are scurrying to warm relations with the USA now that China is busting their balls....(or about to)

Socialist nations are no better than a 40 year old still living in mom's basement and on HER dime....while bragging about their stability.
 
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It was a LOT better before Chavez. Don't fool yourself into believing Socialism is so great..it SUCKS! What part of "People cannot get food now" don't you understand?
It's NOT "as usual", now they have NO CHOICE or extremely few.

Where the hell did I say Socialism is great? All I pointed out was that before Chavez, the situation was not much better for the vast majority of the population. At least now, they have an actual voice in government.. they might be pissing it away, but they have that voice. Before Chavez it was the 1% that ruled the country. Elections were pretty much fixed and the vast majority of the population got absolutely zero out of the oil wealth.

There is no doubt that Venezuela, like many countries, could use a reset on democracy and transparency but it aint gonna happen any time soon. Corruption seems a way of life for most countries.. at least for the 1%.
 
When Socialists run out of other peoples money, Socialism runs out of excuses...and self destructs spectacularly...I present Venezuela...and a HOST of other socialist nations...

Greece comes to mind.

In a socialist nation it's those at the top of gov't that become filthy rich, which is odd. I mean Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pot, Chavez, Castro Bros, all of them were, or are, immensely rich. Everyone else suffered but I guess that's beside the point.
 
It was not much better before Chavez and Co..... there it was the 1% who ruled everything, rigged elections and left 99% of the population in utter poverty and starvation. But hey at least the American companies got their cut!

Apparently you haven't been there. It was much much better before Chavez.
 
Socialism is the #1 best "ism" of the world! Venezuela just didn't do it right....amirite liberals?

Totalitarian governments running a truly socialist economy has nothing to do with "liberals" in America. Anyone making the comparison is immediately disqualified from having their opinions taken seriously.
 
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