Take a Look at This Leftist Piece on Venezuela from 2014. It Hasn't Aged Well.
“Socialism’s critics look at Venezuela and say, ‘We told you so.’ But they are wrong.”
Or at least that’s what Independent columnist Owen Jones thought in 2014.
In an article that reads more like a celebration of former President Hugo Chavez than an argument for Venezuela’s future, Jones paints a positive outlook for the South American country.
Unfortunately for Jones, this didn’t exactly come true — quite the opposite, actually.
Less than half a decade after his predictions, socialist Venezuela is in flames.
With an inflation rate of over 1,000,000 percent according to Forbes, even simple things like coffee have become inaccessible to common people. In what seems like a twist of dark humor, the socialist government’s solution was to raise the minimum wage, not just once but four times in a single year.
What followed was a worrying spiral of price increases and shortages, leaving citizens with nothing but useless paper money.
With food also subject to a widespread shortage, many have turned to searching for scraps in dumpsters. Some reportedly even resorted to raiding zoos for animals to eat. Reports of tapirs and peccaries ending up on tables are not uncommon.
Those stealing Venezuelan zoo specimens shouldn’t expect a fattened calf. One viral photo of an extremely emaciated elephant revealed that even the animals suffer under socialism.
Talk about equality.
This starving elephant at the Caracas Zoo symbolizes what socialism has done to once-prosperous Venezuela pic.twitter.com/qDqKsxfQPo
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 6, 2017
Venezuelans looking to wash their ultra-lean elephant steaks down with water may want to prepare in advance, as well. Running water is becoming extremely scarce and can only be had certain times of the day in some areas.
How did Jones get this so wrong? Besides unchecked hyperinflation, there are a couple of reasons.
The man he lionized, Hugo Chavez, died the year before the article was published. After Chavez lost his battle with cancer, his less-than-stable successor Nicolás Maduro was quick to accuse the United States of covertly giving the former president the disease.
Instability soon followed. Now the country is in the midst of full-scale protests.
The country’s oil reserves, long considered to be the largest proven amount in the world, should give the country a glimmer of hope.
But they remain virtually untapped thanks to long-standing government intervention. Forbes reported that in one instance 19,000 people were fired from the state oil company due to their political beliefs.
While surely making the workforce more politically correct, this resulted in a massive blow to the skill and knowledge base. The Venezuelan government’s failure to reinvest profits back into their business would prove to be a major mistake as well.
Once able to produce 3 million barrels of oil per day, the country’s current output is now less than half of that.
While Jones can be forgiven for not being able to see the future, he should have paid better attention to history. Socialists are horrible at running businesses.
They’re even worse at running countries.
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