Venezuela's Crash: There's No Toilet Paper In Caracas

[Bollocks]

I see that Tony has once again completely ignored what always happens in these situations.

1. System is set up so that socialism can protect those who go under.

2. Economy is set up to largely work in the interests of the upper echelon, with the success of the rest being a matter of convenience.

3. Commodity in a market crashes in price, suddenly leaving an enormous portion of the population jobless.

4. As a result, other markets around it crash.

5. All of a sudden, tons of people all at once have to go on welfare, causing a flood of requests that the government can neither keep up with nor afford.

6. Various levels of fall out from this occur, but for the most part citizens are economically stranded.

This is why anti-socialists in general come off as looking incredibly stupid, they don't even know why a market crashes and are so quick to hop on board the "Socialism did it!" bandwagon, when economies have been crashing for over a century due to unregulated markets. Why is it that countries with some of the STRONGEST socialist programs and heaviest regulations that guard against commodity crashes seem so immune to these crashes? Why is it that countries with such weak regulations seem so prone to them? Why do right wingers just always seem to get economics wrong?

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Free market only works if you imprison it.

We are going to build a wall and we'll have free trade pay for it.

[nextormento]

Venezuela is a country that too much if its own country's economy on the weight of a small number of commodities that failed. Then a system, that was designed to help the poor in their time of need, received a mass influx of people needing to go on it. What's you're seeing is the result of commodities crashing from unchecked "free market" son.

That is a failure of the specific system -to help the poor in the time of need- in place. If your system relies in commodities to balance the increasing spending, your system sucks.
Independently of what socialism, communism, democracy, capitalism totalitarianism, and assorted buzzwords, the revolutionary ideas pushed by Chavez, and followed by Maduro failed massively.
Like the often mentioned price controls on milk and flour (intended to make them affordable to the poor), which had producers operating at a loss and going out of business. Which, in turn, had Venezuela rely on imports adding to their deficit. This has been criticized repeatedly for years, but they didn't care.
Meanwhile Maduro is peddling some theory whereby governments abroad are conspiring to bring down their revolution, or corrupt financing of their political opposition (those people he often puts behind bars).

That oil tanked is not the culprit. It simply exacerbated structural problems.
Incidentally, their social measures, are the very same that got them labeled a "socialist paradise" a few years ago. Cheap as it may be, the rhetorical "socialism works until money runs out" is more than deserved.
But, mind you, socialism is, of course, not the problem: socialists are. Which ones? the likes of Chavez.


OP is a piece of paranoid propaganda. The response that tries to shift the blame, and push some kulturkampf towards some other idea is just as bad. The responses that deny Venezuela being socialist yet describe the Nordic model as being socialist are just desperate delusion.

While imbeciles are on this battle of "socialism is the problem" or "unregulated free market is the problem", the only ones suffering this battle of wits are the Venezolanos. By clinging to this century old battle of ideas, they're letting them suffer.
It's absolutely disgusting that politicians, pundits and journos are utilizing Venezuela as proxy for their insipid circlejerk.

[Cthulhu 2020]

That is a failure of the specific system -to help the poor in the time of need- in place. If your system relies in commodities to balance the increasing spending, your system sucks.

Exactly, it was a system designed to fail either way. That commodity would have meant the failure of the economy with or without socialism. With socialism, the government went bankrupt trying to support all the people who suddenly needed it. Without it, the people simply starved. Some people seem to forget the inherent difference between "The economy" and the budget of the government.

The government went bankrupt because of their desire to help the people, their inability to back it during crisis. But that is not the root problem of why the economy failed. Blaming it on socialism is desperate idiocy by the right.

The inherent flaw of socialism is this, not that it does not work in practice, but it is only as strong as the economy that backs it. It works, but when the economy fails in a massive way, the entire system collapses. It does not matter if this system is socialism or something else. The GOVERNMENT is only as strong as the economy that backs it. Socialist systems work fine, but have an inherent flaw when the economy is designed to operate in boom and bust cycles. Crony capitalism creates these boom and bust cycles, and the voodoo economics that the right supports is this crony capitalism. Socialism in those cases fails because they set it up to fail. There are plenty of examples of successful systems, that have been designed to withstand these economic roller coasters.

[Afrospinach]

Can't they use money to wipe?

Seems to be worth less than toilet paper in Venezuala

Oooh now that is sharp

[Sargerasraider]

There's cronyism in most government systems, and we see the worst of it in systems without socialism. You're not describing something that's unique to socialism. While a somewhat independent factor, we actually see regulations in place that prevent this kind of cronyism in systems that seek to protect the people the most through socialism.

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Lol. Venezuela is a country that too much if its own country's economy on the weight of a small number of commodities that failed. Then a system, that was designed to help the poor in their time of need, received a mass influx of people needing to go on it. What's you're seeing is the result of commodities crashing from unchecked "free market" son.

Your mental gymnastics on this are astounding. It takes some serious skill to take a failure of central planning and then blame it on capitalism.

(Also, I don't think you're old enough to be my father. I keep a hypothetical hierarchy of post/poster quality in my head and have you pegged as a probable undergraduate somewhere given your grasp of logic and argument.)

[Forogil]

Your mental gymnastics on this are astounding. It takes some serious skill to take a failure of central planning and then blame it on capitalism.

Well, to be fair socialists and communists have a long tradition of such doublethink - and to use another of Orwell's book their slogans can go from "Four legs good, two legs bad!" to "Four legs good, two legs better!"

And of course the socialist successes are all in Europe.

They are not socialist - they are social democrats; that don't want to control the production but just redistribute the wealth to some extent - while keeping the capitalist system mostly intact. It seems that you are unable to grasp this - while socialists in successful social democratic countries in Europe are able to explain the difference - and a few years back they also praised socialist Venezuela (they have mostly stopped now).

-Added:
As an example take Norway - currently with a conservative prime minister, but they have a strong Social Democratic party:
http://arbeiderpartiet.no/Om-AP/Info...ion-in-English
(The web-page claim they reformed away from their revolutionary past in the early 1930s.)

There is also Socialist People's Party in Norway: https://www.sv.no/english/ - which is reforming away from socialism; and they are at 4% of the vote or so.

[Sunseeker]

Oh okay I get it.

You leftie types can post all the horse shit "if only Bernie was president" and "conservatives are evil" articles you want, and it's okay because you believe it, but someone else posts an opinion piece that you dislike and your wittle sensibilities are offended?

No, it's annoying as shit. You see me doing it? Nope. Sure I'll jump on the bandwagon to complain about Hillary but hey, who doesn't?

It's not my sensibilities that are offended. It's my education. My education on how politics and economics work together and how this whole "Capitalism saves, communism kills!" is just complete garbage. Any properly managed nation can be successful regardless of the political system. Every improperly managed nation is going to fail. It is that fucking simple.

If a government decided to control the means in which a economy functions by limiting its options to diversify through authoritarian control, it's difficult to just blame falling oil prices for its total and complete economic collapse.

Authoritarianism isn't part of socialism, and it can exist in numerous systems. The authoritarian systems of most of the middle eastern OPEC nations are highly theocratic, not socialist. Many of them provide very little for their people, have very low taxes and STILL fail to diversify. Authoritarianism is bad, you'll get no argument from me there, but socialism=/=authoritarianism.

That's part of the problem with a authoritarian socialist regime that relies on boogeyman to excuse it's failings (namely us).

While amusing, it does get old.

Pot, meet the fucking kettle. You have no idea how tired your shit it. Every day I come here there are at least 3 new threads on how socialism is destroying the world, destroying America, etc..., and yet there are dozens of successful socialist nations. From England to Japan socialism is working GREAT, it's just America that can't wrap its head around the concept that maybe the government can do some things better than private business.

[Forogil]

The inherent flaw of socialism is this, not that it does not work in practice, but it is only as strong as the economy that backs it. It works, but when the economy fails in a massive way, the entire system collapses. It does not matter if this system is socialism or something else. The GOVERNMENT is only as strong as the economy that backs it. Socialist systems work fine, but have an inherent flaw when the economy is designed to operate in boom and bust cycles. Crony capitalism creates these boom and bust cycles, and the voodoo economics that the right supports is this crony capitalism. Socialism in those cases fails because they set it up to fail. There are plenty of examples of successful systems, that have been designed to withstand these economic roller coasters.

None of this makes sense.

The reality is:
Socialist system neither work in practice nor in theory; and the state-control makes it more fragile when crisis hits - while it works less efficiently without crisis (Venezuela had problems producing oil before the crisis).
The boom and bust in the oil industry is to a large extent due to the time needed to develop new wells - not capitalism; and has nothing to do with voodoo economics.
There are economies that grow successfully and withstand shocks - but they are normally not socialists.

So, now I have lead you to knowledge. However "You can lead a person to knowledge, but you can't make them think."

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Pot, meet the fucking kettle. You have no idea how tired your shit it. Every day I come here there are at least 3 new threads on how socialism is destroying the world, destroying America, etc..., and yet there are dozens of successful socialist nations. From England to Japan socialism is working GREAT, it's just America that can't wrap its head around the concept that maybe the government can do some things better than private business.

I just decided to a quick fact check about socialist for those two countries:

England is controlled by Tories - conservatives. Labour is centre-left - and even if there are some socialist in labour it is not a socialist party.
Japan is controlled by LDP who are conservatives. The main opposition is DPJ that are centre/centre-left - and call themselves "democratic centrists". The former socialist party, SPJ, now calls themselves social democrats - and have fallen from power.

Don't you think that calling things by their proper names would be helpful to have a meaningful discussion?

[Accelerate]

Living in a place doesn't automatically mean you know jack shit.

Oh I'm sorry, I guess people that live outside of Venezuela know more about Venezuela's current situation than its citizens, it would seem that you know more about my country than me.

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Lawmakers from Venezuela's ruling Socialist party filed treason charges Wednesday against a prominent billionaire businessman for allegedly seeking an IMF bailout for the recession-ravaged oil giant. Lorenzo Mendoza, head of Venezuelan food and beverage empire Empresas Polar, could face decades in prison if convicted of the charges, which include conspiracy and "usurpation of state functions."
The charges were filed with prosecutors by 101 lawmakers from the 167-seat National Assembly, said deputy Pedro Carreno of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), as he presented the document.
The complaint is based on a leaked phone call between Mendoza and Venezuelan economist Ricardo Hausmann that was aired a week ago on a TV program hosted by the speaker of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello.

This happened a few months ago. VTV always airs leaked phone convos to shame opposition leaders and whatnot, even though it is illegal to do so in this country.

I will reiterate, if you want to have a glimpse of Radical Socialist propaganda, google "VTV Señal en Vivo" and watch the stream, I recommend doing so in the night, where the above mentioned TV show depicts a guy that has a giant club on his desk with a bigass hashtag demanding obama on some shit too long to explain atm, you don't even need to know Spanish, just watch the bizarre propaganda we're fed daily. Other non Government controlled media stations must air at least one minute of these propaganda per hour of transmission.

Just another example of this insanity: Our constitution clearly states that in order to be President you must be born in Venezuela and posses no other nationality but this country's, rumor has it Maduro was born in Colombia, or that his mother is Colombian.

According to Colombia's constitution, whichever of the two above mentioned rumors turn out to be true, he'd automatically have had adquired the Colombian nationality from the moment he was born, therefore invalidating him from assuming the Presidency, therefore every single action, decree, etc done from the moment he took the position till now would be null and void.

The Socialist Party controller court's solution to this predicament? They dug up a totally unrelated trial about a certain young kid regarding said kid's nationality and issued a ruling that basically says that if you have two nationalities, the only one that applies here is the Venezuelan one, establishing a vinculating legal precedent, therefore shielding Maduro should the rumors about his nationality is confirmed.

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While imbeciles are on this battle of "socialism is the problem" or "unregulated free market is the problem", the only ones suffering this battle of wits are the Venezolanos. By clinging to this century old battle of ideas, they're letting them suffer.

Rest assured that once this madness is over, the word Socialism will pretty much be banned for our dictionary, for better or worse, nobody will ever want to associate that word with anything else here.

Ultimately, the mother that doesn't have milk to feed their baby or diapers, the cancer patient that cannot find his treatment, the guy spending hours to see if maybe he can find bread to eat today won't give a fuck if you go and circlejerk debate him that this might be Capitalism or Socialism's fault, we're collectively tired of these nonsense ideology fight that has been going on for 18 years now, we simply want food and medicines for our family first and foremost.

[Sargerasraider]

Authoritarianism isn't part of socialism, and it can exist in numerous systems. The authoritarian systems of most of the middle eastern OPEC nations are highly theocratic, not socialist. Many of them provide very little for their people, have very low taxes and STILL fail to diversify. Authoritarianism is bad, you'll get no argument from me there, but socialism=/=authoritarianism.

I will again preface this that I am -not- talking about the social democracies of Western Europe / Canada / the US (to varying degrees of economic regulation / social benefits), but talking about actual decentralized / public control of the means of production - actual socialism.

I don't think anyone has argued that all authoritarianism is socialism. We have argued the converse, that socialism is inherently authoritarian. It takes an authoritarian system to nationalize industry, plan the economy, institute price controls, crush the black market that inevitably emerges when there are shortages from said price controls. If you can find a way around this, I'm all ears.

Oh I'm sorry, I guess people that live outside of Venezuela know more about Venezuela's current situation than its citizens, it would seem that you know more about my country than me.

Thank you for sharing your perspective and experience. There are some here who wish to do nothing but put their fingers in their ears and ignore reality.

[Accelerate]

Thank you for sharing your perspective and experience. There are some here who wish to do nothing but put their fingers in their ears and ignore reality.

I apologize if some of it comes out as rage/rant, its just that there's so much going on :/

[Sama-81]

There's cronyism in most government systems, and we see the worst of it in systems without socialism. You're not describing something that's unique to socialism. While a somewhat independent factor, we actually see regulations in place that prevent this kind of cronyism in systems that seek to protect the people the most through socialism.

To be fair, countries that try to "protect the people the most through socialism", would be those that embrace socialism as their main ideology and base their economy on socialism. And, as history has taught us (Venezuela merely being the latest chapter in the book), those countries basically invariably go totalitarian and completely and utterly haywire. It's rather like seeing a person predisposed for alcoholism, falling in love with the vodka-bottle at first glance. You KNOW, how the story will end (in regards to Venezuela, they would be in trouble either way, of course, but certainly not as badly as they are now. Their government is straight out crazy inept, reading about it is basically a "should I laugh or should I cry?"-experience).

If you rather meant modern welfare states a la Scandinavia, which utilize social democracy as the guiding principle (but certainly does not seek to protect the people solely through socialism), then I agree with you. But, while those countries obviously embrace some principles derived from socialism, far more so than the US for instance, and have economic models that are basically a mix between capitalism and socialism (more the former than the latter, of course), those countries most certainly aren't 'socialist countries', would NEVER refer to themselves as such, in a million years, and does not have much in common with those that are. Rather, they usually show their distaste for such countries openly (rare as they are).

Interestingly, at least here, social democrats and socialists largely can't stand each other, the resentment between them run deep indeed. Here in Sweden, we have a situation where the social democrats rule with the green party, and are forced to count on the leftist party to uphold a majority in parliament - and the anguish coming from the social democrats is literally palpable. The other parties have formed a block (apart from the Sweden Democrats), and the prime minister literally rages like a frustrated child at being forced to deal with the leftist party (and the entirely inept green party for that matter, but that's another story), who, in turn, critizes him by far the worst, and airs his frustration at the existence of said block whenever he gets the chance to. It is NO secret, to put it mildly, that he wants to rule with one of the blue (here, blue denotes right and red denotes left) parties instead.

Oh, and furthermore, social democrats, and then particularly the party and the media, are usually fully embracing Clinton as the best candidate for the US. One reason being the rhetoric (leaving actual policies aside here) Sanders employ, which is seen as being clearly more akin to the far left, than social democracy. He simply isn't very well liked, in that camp, which might come as a surprise to some. He's too aggressive and "revolutionary" for them, I'd wager.

[Sunseeker]

I just decided to a quick fact check about socialist for those two countries:

England is controlled by Tories - conservatives. Labour is centre-left - and even if there are some socialist in labour it is not a socialist party.
Japan is controlled by LDP who are conservatives. The main opposition is DPJ that are centre/centre-left - and call themselves "democratic centrists". The former socialist party, SPJ, now calls themselves social democrats - and have fallen from power.

Don't you think that calling things by their proper names would be helpful to have a meaningful discussion?

The political party in power does not completely redefine the entire socio-political-economic system of a nation. What would be helpful to having a meaningful discussion would be people actually knowing two things about the country they're talking about and not just randomly googling a nation, reading that "the Tories are conservative" and assuming that means England isn't socialist. Tell that to their NHS will ya?

This is the reason I don't really "engage" in these "discussions". I spent 4 years studying numerous different nations, governmental systems, their histories and a wide variety of scholarly literature on the subject and I have to compete with people who think googling is akin to researching.

I will again preface this that I am -not- talking about the social democracies of Western Europe / Canada / the US (to varying degrees of economic regulation / social benefits), but talking about actual decentralized / public control of the means of production - actual socialism.

I don't think anyone has argued that all authoritarianism is socialism. We have argued the converse, that socialism is inherently authoritarian. It takes an authoritarian system to nationalize industry, plan the economy, institute price controls, crush the black market that inevitably emerges when there are shortages from said price controls. If you can find a way around this, I'm all ears.

Socialism doesn't call for nationalization. Socialism doesn't call for a planned economy (every nation plans it economy to some degree anyway). Socialism doesn't call for instituting price controls. Every country, capitalist or otherwise, fights against black markets.

Socialism calls for the people and the government to have a say over private business. Not for national ownership, not communal ownership but that private entities cannot act 100% on their own volition, particularly on major decisions. In the German example, it mandates that board members must include government and labor(worker) representatives. But the German government also shows favoritism towards companies who work with the government towards the national interest. (This is Fascism, not socialism). The end result (ideally) is that corporate decisions are made with the best outcome for all three parties involved, instead of just with the interests of private business owners in mind. This typically results in reduced growth, but more stable growth over the long term, eliminating the bear and bull markets that lead to radical market spikes and drops. Additionally this also results in less "reactionary" legislation and regulation, because corporate decisions are not made in secret and workers and government are usually aware of the shit before it gets dumped on the people and the government to clean up. Japan is very much the same, though a little heavier on the government subsidization of corporations that serve the national interest. But Japan is a somewhat different beast than Europe.

Socialism calls for doing exactly what it says: getting the whole of society involved in the decision-making process of the nation, its economy and society.

Communism calls for worker ownership: the people who work in the company own the company, and theoretically, everyone owns everything or to be more accurate, noone owns anything and there's no "government" other than the quite literal will of the people. Totalitarianism calls for national ownership, no private or worker ownership, but all owned by the government, the workers and the private owners are cut out. Capitalism calls for private ownership, with theoretically no government oversight or public ownership, relying on notions of rationality and godliness(locke), or pure self-interested greed to keep them in check. Socialism is typically the "mix" system, which calls for some public ownership, some government ownership and some private ownership.

The nationalization of industries has typically been purely the response to private or foreign ownership of those industries making off with national resources, absurd wealth and providing nothing in return to the nation or the people from which those resources and labor stem. There are notable exceptions, such as the USSR, but Stalin is clearly an outlier among national leaders. China, Venezuela, Iran (among others in the ME) and several others nationalized their industries largely due to foreign, private owners making bank off their national resources, and paying the nation in question a pittance for doing so.

[stomination]

Nailed it

http://www.investors.com/politics/co...-its-supplies/

ocialism has found in Venezuela the bottom that socialism always finds. The country is now running out of toilet paper. And food. And medicine. All this want in an extraordinarily oil-rich nation with eight times the crude reserves found in the U.S. and maybe the most in the world.

Venezuela is Bernie Sanders' kind of country. The semi-Democrat likes to say that the version of socialism he advocates is the sort found in Scandinavia, where everyone is taken care of. But the fact is those countries tried welfare statism and found that it didn't work.

Unlike unrepentant cranks such as Sanders -- blame George Orwell, not us, for tagging socialists with the "crank" label -- these countries repented of their evil economic ways. Sweden has reformed its system, while Denmark has told Sanders to stop smearing its market economy as a socialist program in which "it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it's pretty hard to be very, very poor."

Neither one is fully a capitalist nation -- no country, not even the U.S., is -- but they have moved on from their socialist mistakes.

So Sanders is stuck with Venezuela. He's even been named by the country's president Nicolas Maduro as "our revolutionary friend."


But he's tried to create some distance between its failure and his never-ending high-school fixation with government-mandated fairness. When asked about the country's socialist crash, he avoided answering a hard but highly relevant question by saying, "I am very interested, but right now I'm running for president of the United States."

Earlier in the campaign Sanders said he was "not looking at Venezuela ... not looking at Cuba" when endorsing "democratic socialism." But that's the new Bernie Sanders who's running for president and can't afford to appear to be the radical he is. The truth is, Paul Sperry writes, Sanders has a "radical pro-communist past" and even took "goodwill" trips to the U.S.S.R., Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua. He has also recommended Castro and the Daniel Ortega regime in Managua.

Socialism is actually just another name for misery. Everywhere it's been genuinely tried, the people it's supposed to have benefited have suffered: Venezuela, Cuba, Red China, the Soviet Union. Maybe Sanders' rabid supporters would be willing to help the deprived of Venezuela by sending them toilet paper, which capitalist nations have in abundance. They could even send deodorant, too -- but it would have to be a single brand.

Remember, Sanders is the bossy nabob who has gone on record as saying Americans "don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants." Yes, that's socialism -- and someone who's never outgrown his teen fling with the myth of a worker's paradise -- talking.

Just about every country they listed was ruled by a dictatorship or in a 3rd world country. Of course "socialism" isn't going to work with dictators and countries that base its economy on just oil and have the oil price fall way below what they need.

[Glnger]

Nailed it

http://www.investors.com/politics/co...-its-supplies/

ocialism has found in Venezuela the bottom that socialism always finds. The country is now running out of toilet paper. And food. And medicine. All this want in an extraordinarily oil-rich nation with eight times the crude reserves found in the U.S. and maybe the most in the world.

Venezuela is Bernie Sanders' kind of country. The semi-Democrat likes to say that the version of socialism he advocates is the sort found in Scandinavia, where everyone is taken care of. But the fact is those countries tried welfare statism and found that it didn't work.

Unlike unrepentant cranks such as Sanders -- blame George Orwell, not us, for tagging socialists with the "crank" label -- these countries repented of their evil economic ways. Sweden has reformed its system, while Denmark has told Sanders to stop smearing its market economy as a socialist program in which "it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it's pretty hard to be very, very poor."

Neither one is fully a capitalist nation -- no country, not even the U.S., is -- but they have moved on from their socialist mistakes.

So Sanders is stuck with Venezuela. He's even been named by the country's president Nicolas Maduro as "our revolutionary friend."


But he's tried to create some distance between its failure and his never-ending high-school fixation with government-mandated fairness. When asked about the country's socialist crash, he avoided answering a hard but highly relevant question by saying, "I am very interested, but right now I'm running for president of the United States."

Earlier in the campaign Sanders said he was "not looking at Venezuela ... not looking at Cuba" when endorsing "democratic socialism." But that's the new Bernie Sanders who's running for president and can't afford to appear to be the radical he is. The truth is, Paul Sperry writes, Sanders has a "radical pro-communist past" and even took "goodwill" trips to the U.S.S.R., Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua. He has also recommended Castro and the Daniel Ortega regime in Managua.

Socialism is actually just another name for misery. Everywhere it's been genuinely tried, the people it's supposed to have benefited have suffered: Venezuela, Cuba, Red China, the Soviet Union. Maybe Sanders' rabid supporters would be willing to help the deprived of Venezuela by sending them toilet paper, which capitalist nations have in abundance. They could even send deodorant, too -- but it would have to be a single brand.

Remember, Sanders is the bossy nabob who has gone on record as saying Americans "don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants." Yes, that's socialism -- and someone who's never outgrown his teen fling with the myth of a worker's paradise -- talking.

OH TONY, say it isn't so, a nation that had 90% of its exports in oil is failing when oil prices go down.... jesus christ, I'd better rethink my whole philosophy on economics and capitalism... oh wait no, even me in my liquored state can see through this shit.

clearly this is a devastating blow to Sanders and America who have clearly made oil production a hallmark of their campaign platform

lets check with cotton on the spot to see what % oil is on US's GDP
"0.8% mate"
.....
"that is devastating, cotton", what ever will we do"
"1 less beer per person over the year will cover that"
"oh, right... what are we some kind of dumb shits?"

tony..............
your quoting an article comparing Venezuela to USA.... do you believe USA is as bad as Venezuela....
Do you not like America, Tony?

Tony.... ...
.......
.....

tho I always love when someone being paid solely through my tax dollars has the gumption to publicly call out others for being leeches.

[Cthulhu 2020]

None of this makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. The economy was backed by a small number of commodities, and for the most part by a single commodity. That commodity crashed and the economy went south. Socialism is designed to help people who fall on hard times, but when everyone falls on hard times all at once, the sudden weight collapses the state budget. There's nothing about socialism that caused the initial collapse of the economy, since that came BEFORE the crash of the government.

Nobody in here, not a single person, has yet to explain the mechanism by which they think they know that socialism caused the economy to go south, and many make the all too common mistake of conflating the state budget with the economy in general - which is how you know they're completely full of shit. Many governmental budgets have fallen through before while the economy remained in tact, however when the economy turns south due to a commodity crash, the governmental budget collapsing is an inevitable result. What has lessened the impact of recessions in many countries built around a strong socialist system throughout the world was strong controls on markets so boom and bust cycles are not nearly so disastrous.

[Glnger]

It makes perfect sense. The economy was backed by a small number of commodities, and for the most part by a single commodity. That commodity crashed and the economy went south. Socialism is designed to help people who fall on hard times, but when everyone falls on hard times all at once, the sudden weight collapses the state budget. There's nothing about socialism that caused the initial collapse of the economy, since that came BEFORE the crash of the government.

Nobody in here, not a single person, has yet to explain the mechanism by which they think they know that socialism caused the economy to go south, and many make the all too common mistake of conflating the state budget with the economy in general - which is how you know they're completely full of shit. Many governmental budgets have fallen through before while the economy remained in tact, however when the economy turns south due to a commodity crash, the governmental budget collapsing is an inevitable result. What has lessened the impact of recessions in many countries built around a strong socialist system throughout the world was strong controls on markets so boom and bust cycles are not nearly so disastrous.

if it was America The oil companies would have gone bankrupt, the government would do a bailout (again) and instead of just a company going under we'd socialize the loss of that company on the backs of tax payers (again)

this is really only a story if you don't spend more than 5 seconds thinking about economics
If you don't remember, Chavez was criticized for basing the social welfare of the country on oil and the response (even among some Americans) was that oil would just keep going up in value.... don't act like Americans aren't losing money here as well.... it just so happens single states like California have the 5th largest global GDP... were not gonna get stumbled and trip over market fluctuations.

[Theinquisition]

OH TONY, say it isn't so, a nation that had 90% of its exports in oil is failing when oil prices go down.... jesus christ, I'd better rethink my whole philosophy on economics and capitalism... oh wait no, even me in my liquored state can see through this shit.

clearly this is a devastating blow to Sanders and America who have clearly made oil production a hallmark of their campaign platform

lets check with cotton on the spot to see what % oil is on US's GDP
"0.8% mate"
.....
"that is devastating, cotton", what ever will we do"
"1 less beer per person over the year will cover that"
"oh, right... what are we some kind of dumb shits?"

tony..............
your quoting an article comparing Venezuela to USA.... do you believe USA is as bad as Venezuela....
Do you not like America, Tony?

Tony.... ...
.......
.....

tho I always love when someone being paid solely through my tax dollars has the gumption to publicly call out others for being leeches.

1. Yeah, a country that nationalizes industries and confiscates foreign holdings gets pigeon holed into a single industry for its income. It didn't diversify because the economy was centrally planned by a socialist regime with a bus driver for a leader. shocking.

A gov't with too much power and not enough innovation. Exactly what I'd like to avoid.

2. The U.S. isn't nearly as bad as Venezuela, despite Bernie Sanders and his cronies.

3. This point has nothing to do with the discussion, but since you brought it up....I'm not longer in the military, my VA pension makes up less than 10% of my overall monthly income. It's literally my motorcycle modification and Ammunition money. So the VA pension is not my sole source of income. Even if it was, it was earned though service and part of a contractual agreement between myself and the government.

I guess you have a issue with contractual agreements?

I also doubt the pittance you make pays anyone in the military anything, you probably get everything back that you pay in taxes because you don't make enough.

[THE Bigzoman]

It makes perfect sense. The economy was backed by a small number of commodities, and for the most part by a single commodity. That commodity crashed and the economy went south. Socialism is designed to help people who fall on hard times, but when everyone falls on hard times all at once, the sudden weight collapses the state budget. There's nothing about socialism that caused the initial collapse of the economy, since that came BEFORE the crash of the government.

Nobody in here, not a single person, has yet to explain the mechanism by which they think they know that socialism caused the economy to go south, and many make the all too common mistake of conflating the state budget with the economy in general - which is how you know they're completely full of shit. Many governmental budgets have fallen through before while the economy remained in tact, however when the economy turns south due to a commodity crash, the governmental budget collapsing is an inevitable result. What has lessened the impact of recessions in many countries built around a strong socialist system throughout the world was strong controls on markets so boom and bust cycles are not nearly so disastrous.

Actually I did.

When you mismanage your funds and seize the assets of foreign investors under socialist notions/pretenses, then yes, it might play a factor in future growth rates, and consequently, a governments ability to keep an economy stable during busts.

[Glnger]

da

1. Yeah, a country that nationalizes industries and confiscates foreign holdings gets pigeon holed into a single industry for its income. It didn't diversify because the economy was centrally planned by a socialist regime with a bus driver for a leader. shocking.

A gov't with too much power and not enough innovation. Exactly what I'd like to avoid.

2. The U.S. isn't nearly as bad as Venezuela, despite Bernie Sanders and his cronies.

3. This point has nothing to do with the discussion, but since you brought it up....I'm not longer in the military, my VA pension makes up less than 10% of my overall monthly income. It's literally my motorcycle modification and Ammunition money. So the VA pension is not my sole source of income. Even if it was, it was earned though service and part of a contractual agreement between myself and the government.

I guess you have a issue with contractual agreements?

I also doubt the pittance you make pays anyone in the military anything, you probably get everything back that you pay in taxes because you don't make enough.

do you know what else is a contractual agreement? medicare, retirement, medicade......do you care about MY contract agreements? doesn't seem like it.

always good to see someone working in the system that makes shit money trying to shit on other people who (only in your imagination) who make slightly less money.

Tony: the guy with a 1 inch dick making fun of guys who he only thinks have a slightly smaller one...
GET EM` TIGER!
way to punch down. with enough deflection no one will ever know how truly empty you are

A true sign of a warrior.

and remember, fuckface. you're the one that doesn't want to increase the minimum wages... yet the first thing you do is attack how much I make..... nah. you're a true piece of shit, guy. genuinely.

Infracted - minor flaming