Socialist Catastrophe in Venezuela

Journalists are now reporting regularly on the crisis in Venezuela, with shortages of everything from toilet paper tofood and now daily street protests. What the news reports too often miss is, Why? Why is a formerly middle-class, oil-rich country now so desperately poor?The Weekly Standardnotes a New York Timesarticle, “How Venezuela Stumbled to the Brink of Collapse,” that spends 1800 words on the country’s “collapse into authoritarianism.” The Standard summarizes:The strongman Hugo Ch ávez “ran for president in 1998. His populist message of returning power to the people won him victory.” Chávez polarized because “populism describes a world divided between the righteous people and the corrupt elite.” Now, under the late Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, “The poli tical system, after years of erosion, has become a hybrid of democratic and authoritarian features.”But never does the article identify what economic system could cause such disaster. It does mention specific policies: subsidies, welfare programs, money printing, inflation, and price controls. But nationalization is never mentioned. And in particular, the Standard points out, the article does not use the word “socialism” (or “socialist”). It does not mention that Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have headed the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Socialism is the cause that must not be named.So it ’s refreshing to see a rather more forthrightarticle in the Washington Post t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs