Saturday, January 17, 2015

Food Shortages Undermine Venezuela's Teetering Socialism

Venezuelans are being arrested for posting Internet photos of shortages in stores. So let's get this straight: Murder and mayhem are de facto legal in that crime pit, but posting evidence of socialism's failure merits jailing.

As socialism plays out to its logical conclusion in Venezuela, the specters of long lines, rationing, troop enforcers, bizarre edicts and desperate statements are now the order of the day.

Not only have more than a dozen Venezuelans been arrested for posting photographs of empty store shelves on social media, three governors have responded to long lines by — prohibiting them; ordering the arrest of anyone who lines up for goods before sunrise.

Troops now supervise lines because so many fistfights and looting incidents break out in these daily 12-hour ordeals for rice or toilet paper. Warehouses full of diapers have been seized and their owners accused of "hoarding." Strange arrangements have cropped up, too, with the rich paying the poor to spend their days in line for them, securing supplies so they don't have to.

And along with 80% food-price inflation, an economy premised on importing 70% of its food supply, and a minimum wage that covers only 17% of a basic food basket, it's obvious that the poor are suffering the most from 16 years of socialism.

Which is what Venezuela's bishops stated in a pastoral letter that powerfully denounced the poverty and ruin brought to their country.

The government's decision to "impose a political-economic system" that is "socialist, Marxist or communist," "totalitarian and centralist" and "undermines the freedom and rights of individuals and associations" is to blame, they wrote.

The system, they said, has failed wherever it's been tried and "created growing poverty among large sectors of the population, particularly among those with the fewest economic resources."
 
 

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