Two interesting news items this morning, both of them having to do with the socialist disaster area that is Venezuela.
First, their president admits that the economy has failed. Yeah, it took him long enough to admit that. It has been obvious to the casual observer for a while now.
Second, a single US dollar will buy 3.5 million liters of gasoline in Venezuela. I can remember when a single US dollar would buy five gallons of gasoline in the US. But that's been several decades ago.
That is the face of socialism everywhere it is tried. it's a simple lesson, but one that many people never seem to realize. Socialism fails everywhere it is tried.
3 comments:
Having been born and spent most of my youth down in Venezuela I follow the subject closely. Gas might appear to be cheap to us, but trouble is inflation has hit over a million percent down there this year. To give you a sense of perspective it costs 2.6 million bolivars to buy a carton of eggs if you can even find them. That represents about a months salary at minimum wage down there. In US dollars that is about 60 cents. Top oil production in the early 80s was 6 million barrels per day. Today they are incapable of producing 100 thousand BPD. Employees in the oil industry from top to bottom, all ardent supporters of Chavez and now Maduro (among so many others)are not being paid to the point of 80% absenteeism rate and those that do show up pass out on the job for lack of nutrition. Even on the rare occasion they receive any payment it devalues precipitously before they can even cash the check and then there is no food available to be bought. Otherwise honest people have resorted to criminal activity just to survive. Venezuelan oil tankers can't pay port, pilot, and docking fees as not even the Chinese will extend them credit any longer as Venezuela has defaulted on its shipments of oil to pay its 600 billion $ debt to them. So oil tankers sit off shore in limbo. External contractors needed to operate are not paid either. Refineries are paralyzed for lack of parts and supplies to operate for the same reason. Simply put the largest oil reserve in the world is now paralyzed due to the now total implementation of communist totalitarian doctrine and consequent corruption.
They just chopped FIVE zeros off their currency... sigh... They are back to a barter society.
So when this corrects....as it will. It seems to me that all they need to do is open the "oil spigot" and start pumping/selling it to other countries. Then the money will start flowing back in to their country. Hm, now why doesn't their leader understand that....I would think he would want to stay in power?!?!?!
On another thought....have you ever noticed; the countries that believe in "death cultures" always seem to have these kinda problems?
Steve
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