Once touted as a socialist paradise by dummy Sean Penn, Venezuela is in big trouble. It suffers from the highest inflation rate in the world and huge shortages of basic goods and services. Government office are only open on Monday and Tuesday. There are huge lines at local banks for depositors as they show up with duffle bags filled with 100 peso Bolivars, worth less than a penny. They all have to be counted, explaining the long waits. One might think that all the government needs to do is print higher value bank notes, but unfortunately that isn't possible. It takes a special company to print bank notes that are impossible to counterfeit, and no company with the ability to do so will extend credit to Venezuela. Life saving medications and even basic medical supplies are unavailable at hospitals and pharmacies and the death rate among infants and the elderly is climbing. Beer production is way down due to a shortage in hops. The government's solution is to arrest the CEO and put him in prison. They have threatened other food manufacturers as well.
Venezuela has huge reserves of oil and is an OPEC member. The government under past and now deceased president Hugo Chavez stole the oil wells and has badly mismanaged them. Chavez allowed oil to be sold below the cost of raising it in Venezuela, cutting down on profits from selling it abroad. Now that oil prices have dropped, Venezuela has no real source of hard currency. Retail outlets have empty shelves and there is a severe food shortage. The poverty rate is an astounding 70%, unusual for a country with Venezuela's resources. With out of control inflation and lack of opportunities, crime is a major problem. In fact, crime is out of control. Smuggling across the Columbian border has increased as well, with Venezuelans trading over $5 billion cheap oil for goods that are not available anymore in their country that they can sell on the black market.
Current President Nicolas Maduro has been asked to call for a recall referendum, but so far has resisted despite huge demonstrations and it is very unlikely he will do so. As with most inept leaders, he blames someone else for his failures. As usual he blames the United States. Kind of sounds like Obama's blame Bush for everything. Former Uruguayan president Jose Mujica has said that Maduro is as "crazy as a goat. He talks about everything but fixes nothing and is in danger of becoming another petty dictator."
Years ago, I had many close friends from Caracas, Venezuela and after the Bolivar was devalued in the eighties, they began pulling their money out of Venezuela and moving to Spain or elsewhere, where they also had personal ties. None are left in Caracas.
Venezuela is a perfect example of what happens when the government tries to control everything. The businesses and business leaders leave the country and the government has no one from whom to steal money. That is the basic problem with socialism, eventually the money runs out. In America, many of our multinational corporations have moved their headquarters out of this country in order to avoid the highest business taxes in the world, hoarding trillions in cash abroad. Lowering corporate tax rates would allow this money to be repatriated and a more reasonable tax paid. Obama refuses to do this which is further evidence that he is more interested in destroying the economy than helping it. In a push for what is touted as income equality, socialism rewards those who fail or don't even try and punishes those who are successful. Eventually there are fewer and fewer workers as some see that those who don't work get the same or even more in government benefits. Despite the ridiculous and unbelievable jobless number, the reality is that there is a larger percentage of Americans not working now than since the failed Jimmy Carter presidency. Instead of creating economic opportunities for Americans, Obama has increased unemployment benefits and pushed anti employment programs such as outlandish regulation, Obamacare, global warming legislation, doubling the minimum wage, and banking regulation that inhibit small business expansion.
Bernie Sanders' campaign has been based on "free" this and that and found a large group of young voters who like his message. For the most part, these are inexperienced millennials, many of whom have gotten out of college and even earned advanced degrees, burdened with student loans (many are in default), but no job because of Obama's socialist policies, but are too stupid or inexperienced to realize it. They have been subjected to far left ideology by their "ivory tower" college professors, who seem to stress socialism and victimization. As you recall, the mantra of "free stuff" is what got Obama elected. Hitlery wants to close the coal companies and put miners out of work and then give them a multi billion dollar welfare gift. The miners in West Virginia rejected her outright, as they are good Americans and would rather work hard rather then be on welfare.
Obama's presidency is a great example of how socialism can destroy a country and b both Sanders and Clinton want to expand on that. He has wasted trillions of dollars that should not have been spent at all. His unrealistic approach to healthcare is about to collapse. He has taken billions from our military and downgraded it, in order to waste money on welfare and other unsuccessful projects. He now is pushing global warming, the ultimate socialist plan for America. All Americans have to do is spend a little time researching global warming to find that it is a hoax. Google "origin apocalyptic global warming" to get started or go to the 4 part article I published on this blog in 2012.
Socialism has never been successful. It is a way of keeping everybody down (except the political elite) rather than raising everybody up. Einstein said that repeating the same experiment over and over again expecting to get a different result is insanity. Are Obama, Sanders, and Hitlery insane or do they just want to destroy America?
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