Those familiar with South America are familiar with the plight of Venezuela. Venezuela is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. Just over a decade ago, it was the envy of the emerging markets.
Then the people fell for Socialism. Everyone likes free stuff, and Socialism offers lots and lots of free stuff. Taking money from people through taxes isn’t really stealing. After all, everyone—especially the wealthy—should pay their fare share.
Venezuela elected a socialist government. The socialist government proceeded to do what socialists always do when they get power. They started taking other people’s stuff in hopes of giving away more free stuff to their voters.
As they say, “The only problem with Socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s stuff to give away.”
That’s exactly what happened. Venezuela, the envy of the Spanish speaking world, managed to go bankrupt giving away everything they could take.
Politicians love socialism. It turns out to be a perfectly legal way of buying votes. No government in the world declares voting when you’re on the government dole a conflict of interest, so voters around the world get bribed by socialist politicians to vote for more Socialism.
Of course, you can’t spread Socialism if people realize how badly it turned out for Venezuela, Italy, Greece, and even **gasp** Nazi Germany. So the propaganda machines spun up to tell everyone that Venezuela isn’t all that bad off.
My favorite propaganda piece came out today, criticizing anyone who would characterize Venezuela as having Hyperinflation. According to the official government numbers, they only have 70% inflation this year. That isn’t hyperinflation, so things aren’t so bad in Venezuela.
Um, … The official number might be 70% this year, but they have a history of playing with numbers so socialism doesn’t look bad. Last year, the official number was 68%, but a little math showed the real number to be around 800%.
Do a little math. If a gallon of milk cost $3 and you get hit with an annual inflation of 800%, in one year that $3 gallon of milk becomes $24, but by the end of year two, guess what? That $3 gallon of milk is now $192.
Most of my liberal-socialism-loving friends still don’t think that things could be that bad in Venezuela. It’s just more conspiracy theories by those nutty Republicans. 70% official inflation is nowhere near the 12,000% threshold of real hyperinflation. After all, it’s not like Venezuelans needs wheelbarrows of money to buy groceries, right?
It might be worth noting, Bloomberg is reporting today that Venezuelans have stopped counting cash and now weigh the piles necessary to buy items.
No, they don’t need wheelbarrows, yet. Long live socialism!
Seriously, … every Democracy or Republic should pass a law that only allows people paying more in taxes than they get in handouts from the government to be allowed to vote. If you don’t eliminate this voting-yourself-other-people’s-money, we’re going to see every Democracy or Republic eventually fall to the fallacy of Socialism.
