Venezuela is nearing collapse

[dan_s]

The Joys of Socialism

If a dire situation can erupt suddenly in the serene streets of Paris, imagine what life is like under the socialist utopia of Venezuela. The New York Times writes:

With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger.

Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves.

Venezuela used to export corn and sugar. Now they import it — but not enough, nor in good quantity. A recent study declared that 87% of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food. A different poll found that 72% of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. But years of mismanagement and government theft through nationalization of industry have robbed the country of its most productive class. Those with the means to leave left years ago.

Price fixing, arbitrary government decrees, and the printing press have destroyed what managed to survive. And yet Maria Gabriela Chavez, the daughter of the former leader Hugo Chavez, is Venezuela's richest woman with $4.2 billion. It should be noted that before he died, Hugo Chavez famously declared that "being rich is bad" and during his lifetime railed against the wealthy for being lazy and gluttonous. (Sounds like Bernie Sanders).

And so it goes. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. Now it is destitute.