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Venezuela is in the midst of a severe economic downturn caused by low oil prices and government policies that have scared away private investment. The country's bonds are one of the few ways the current government is able to raise money to support its collapsing economy.

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ORIGINAL: ThatDizzyChick

LOLOOLOLOOLOLOL
Fuck you are stupid.

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ORIGINAL: BoscoX

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Venezuela is in the midst of a severe economic downturn caused by low oil prices and government policies that have scared away private investment. The country's bonds are one of the few ways the current government is able to raise money to support its collapsing economy.

While the rest of the world is enjoying economic recovery

"Socialist"

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ORIGINAL: Edwird

Thank goodness for Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson, your idea of "sane men."

Or, are you not understanding the situation, here?

Don't make me have to go all 'Strother Martin' on you, boy.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

Venezuela is a federal presidential republic. So, you know Venezualens down there from the toilets you lick at KFC, nancy? They tell you that do they?

You might listen to some real news you ignorant fuck.

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The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism for Venezuela

In what appeared to be a surprise to almost everyone, on January 30, 2005, in a speech to the 5th World Social Forum, President Hugo Chavez announced that he supported the creation of socialism of the 21st century in Venezuela. According to Chavez, this socialism would be different from the socialism of the 20th century. While Chavez was vague about exactly how this new socialism would be different, he implied it would not be a state socialism as was practiced in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe or as is practiced in Cuba today. Rather, it would be a socialism that would be more pluralistic and less state-centered...

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...Nicolas Maduro retains power for now, thanks only to the support of the Venezuelan military. How long they will continue to back him remains to be seen. He has earned the well-deserved condemnation of all but the few remaining hard-line Communist regimes in the region: Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

If one good thing can emerge from this terrible and tragic situation it is this: Venezuela should serve as an eternal example of the utter depravity of socialism in all its forms. Socialism, after all, is the political and economic philosophy that has ruined half of the world, killing an estimated 100 million innocent victims over the course of the 20th century...

Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, would argue that making a comparison between him and the totalitarian regimes of Cuba or Venezuela or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China is patently unfair. They may have a point. Although only Bernie Sanders knows what is in his heart and mind, it appears unlikely that a President Sanders would try to call a new Constitutional Assembly, curtail freedom of speech and the press, or jail political opponents. He probably is sane enough to realize, as well, that nationalizing industry and confiscating private property would be counter-productive.

If Bernie Sanders were to sit down with the PanAm Post, he would happily tell us that the Venezuelan comparison in nonsense. No, no, no. Bernie is a fan of the so-called democratic socialism of Iceland and Denmark and Norway…which has nothing to do with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua.

Except that Bernie Sanders and his Latin American socialist populist counterparts are equally erroneous when it comes to economic policy. Bernie Sanders may hype Western Europe as his model, yet he seems blissfully ignorant of the wake of destruction that socialist governments have left across the world over the past 150 years. Has an actual socialist economy ever actually worked? Is it not true that actual human beings who have lived in such economies have routinely risked their lives to flee the highly inefficient, unproductive, and inhumane economies that socialism has engendered from East Germany and Czechoslovakia to Vietnam and Cambodia to North Korea to Cuba and now Venezuela? Is it not true that 100 million innocent victims have been killed by socialism in the 20th century alone?

Regarding so-called “Scandinavian socialism”, proponents of capitalism have a clear and concise argument at their disposal. The economies in Scandinavia, are actually vibrant and robust capitalist free-market economies, that provide a reasonable social safety net to their high-income, well-educated populations. Their achievements are due to capitalism, and they are routinely ranked among the world’s freest economies by the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. In fact, every single one of the supposedly “socialist” countries frequently lauded by Sanders is ranked in the top 25. The reality is that the Netherlands and Sweden and Norway and Denmark abandoned any vestiges of centrally-planned, state-controlled command economies long ago. They are bastions of capitalism…not socialism.

While Bernie may not be Hugo Chavez or Daniel Ortega or Fidel Castro, his rhetoric and ideology often bear a striking resemblance to these Latin American Communist icons. Bernie represents a new trend in the American Left today: where socialism and populism meet. Furthermore, it should come as no shock to discover that Nicolas Maduro endorsed Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary...

Bernie Sanders may not share the ruthlessness or disregard for human rights of Latin American Communist dictators, but their shared economic vision would lead to utter disaster…setting America on the path to economic ruin, as we’ve seen time and time again in socialist command economies from Latin America to Eastern Europe to Asia.

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Hey Bernie, I left Venezuela's socialism behind for a reason: Voices

As an immigrant from Latin America, I have found the current presidential election to be both depressing and terrifying — but not for the obvious reason. The negativity in rhetoric concerns me, of course. Yet it pales in comparison to the growing acceptance of socialism, which I thought I left behind in my formerly rich homeland, Venezuela...

I understand where socialism’s young devotees are coming from. I was a teenager when Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela’s 1998 presidential election. Then, my countrymen were disenchanted with our trajectory and demanded a radical change, not unlike millions of Americans today. As a young and idealistic student myself, I was captivated by socialism’s promise of a more equal, fair and just society.

Reality has opened my eyes to just how wrong I was. Venezuela’s 17-year experience with socialism has taught me a number of lessons about its inherent problems and inevitable failure...

Socialism espouses further redistribution of wealth, which may appear to bear fruit in the short-term. However, the effects of undermining private property rights and placing restrictions on economic liberty erode the creation and spread of wealth in the long-term. As this happens, the confiscatory policies initially targeted at the rich and the business community become increasingly destructive and ineffective, leading to their expansion to an ever-larger share of the population.

This necessarily provokes a public backlash as people begin to realize their condition is deteriorating. Naturally, what follows is that those in power seek to hold onto it by curtailing civil liberties. Freedom of speech, press, assembly and others begin to wither away.

These trends in Venezuela were glaringly evident to me — and increasingly so to the world — by the early 2000s. They forced me to begin asking questions about the nature of socialism, as well as whether another economic system was superior.

I found my answer in America. I came here to pursue an education. From this vantage point, I quickly realized that a system of free enterprise — full of competition, innovation and material well-being — stood in stark contrast to the growing poverty, stagnation and despair in my homeland.

The chasm between my country of birth and my country of choice widened in the following decade. The socialist model of command and control has utterly devastated the Venezuelan people. Overall poverty has skyrocketed from approximately 30% to over 70% over the years — and recent estimates put over half of the country’s 30.7 million people in extreme poverty. Pitifully, socialism’s attempts to control prices and direct the flow of goods and resources have led to shortages of even basic necessities, from food to toilet paper...

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The majority of Venezuelans believe in a socialist economy [sorry mnottertroll], but want the government to be more efficient and promote private investment, a top pollster said Wednesday.

“Most [Venezuelans] believe in a strong, vigorous state [to] establish clear laws for the market,” said Oscar Schemel, the head of polling agency Hinterlaces.

He pointed to the latest Hinterlaces poll, which asked participants if “the best thing for Venezuela is a socialist economic model of production, where various forms of private property exist”.

While three out of four Venezuelans agreed with this statement, 24 percent disagreed, while 1 percent were unsure.

Schemel said the data shows Venezuelans want a socialist state with private investment and a “mixed economy”. He added that Venezuelans believe the state “should be a referee” that directs investment.

“Sixty one percent of the population affirms that the economy must be led by the state, 86 percent think that the government should promote private investment,” he said...

In another question looking at the fate of state oil firm PDVSA, 74 percent of respondents said they would oppose any proposal to privatize the company. Twenty three percent said they would support such a proposal. Similar results were found for questions dealing with other state enterprises. When asked whether the electricity grid should be privatized, 32 percent of respondents agreed, while 67 percent said they would oppose such a measure. Sixty nine said they would oppose privatizing state telecommunications giant CANTV, while 30 percent would be in support.