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Title: Socialist turn off electricity for 5 days
Source:
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URL Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2 ... ment-turns-out-the-lights.html
Published: Mar 27, 2016
Author: Marina Jimenez
Post Date: 2016-03-27 11:04:07 by Justified
Keywords: Socialism
Views: 1490
Comments: 23
In Venezuela, the government turns out the lights Venezuelan government orders three extra days off for Easter in order to reduce electricity usage. When your government asks you not to go to work for five days, to conserve power, your country is in trouble. Especially when you live in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves. Also rich in gold and other minerals, the country is nonetheless on the brink of bankruptcy. “Venezuela is going through the worst crisis in its 200-year history,” said Jean Daudelin, a professor and Latin American specialist at Carleton University currently on sabbatical in South America. “The economy is in shambles and the political system is paralyzed.” The economy contracted by 10 per cent in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund, and is expected to shrink by a similar amount again this year. Oil revenues have declined, not just because of low prices but due to years of underinvestment and declining productivity. Inflation is estimated at 200 per cent — the highest in the world. Infrastructure, including the electricity grid, is in such poor shape that President Nicolas Maduro extended the Easter holiday to five days this week to address a drought affecting hydroelectric dams. Malls, banks and many supermarkets closed, or cut hours. “We had to go to a black market supplier, where the prices are higher, to find oil and white corn flour to make arepas,” Harold Schott, an industrial engineer, said after trying to shop Thursday in Maracay, a city 120 kilometres west of Caracas. “Inflation is so bad that cheese costs 10 times what it did three months ago. My car battery died a week ago and I cannot find a replacement.” While Venezuelans are accustomed to food shortages, Caracas journalist Mary Trina Mena said the quality of life has deteriorated drastically in the last year. “I have water only 20 minutes a day three times a day, but I never know when that will be. People are frustrated and tired of not finding solutions.” Some analysts, including Daudelin, fear there could be military intervention. One reason is that it is unclear that the two main opposition leaders, Henrique Capriles and Leopoldo Lopez (who is in prison for inciting violence during anti-government protests), are able to work together for long enough to offer a valid leadership alternative. The military continues to back Maduro, who replaced former president Hugo Chavez after he died in 2013. Venezuela has a long history of military intervention; Chavez himself led an attempted coup in 1992 before becoming president in 1999, and he survived a coup attempt in 2002. Many of the challenges Venezuela faces stem from a long-standing overreliance on petrodollars, and a failure to invest properly in the state-run oil and gas company, Petroleos de Venezuela, known by its Spanish acronym, PDVSA. Chavez increased social spending when the price of oil was high, expanding the government debt. He fired thousands of oil workers and executives and demanded control of PDVSA’s joint ventures. The result has been a reduction in oil exports. “Venezuela is producing one million oil barrels per day less than it was 50 years ago, and its population has grown by three (times, to 30 million),” said Dany Bahar, an economist, Venezuela expert and fellow with the Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. With the price of oil having plunged from more than $100 (U.S.) per barrel to the current $40, the country has run out of money to pay for imports and make its debt payments. The result has been a cut in imports, to the point that the government can no longer provide for its citizens. “The only way for the government to pay its debt is to print money. That creates inflation,” said Bahar. “The price controls make it almost impossible to produce things. That’s why the shelves are bare.” Maduro also lacks his predecessor’s legendary charisma. That helped the opposition Democratic Unity alliance (MUD) to win two-thirds of the 167 seats in December’s parliamentary election. However, the opposition’s ability to wield influence is being challenged by Maduro. He signed a decree that stripped the assembly of its ability to oversee the central bank. And the government-controlled Supreme Court ruled three opposition legislators could not be sworn in, thus denying their “super majority” that could have given parliament the power to unseat Maduro. “It is a crisis of governability,” said Bahar. “Venezuela has already defaulted, on its citizens.” Venezuela’s challenges may not have the same impact globally as the political and economic problems facing Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, where protesters are calling for the resignation of President Dilma Rouseff over a corruption scandal. However, that is of little comfort to Venezuela’s citizens, who are left in the dark, wondering how much worse it can get, and what kind of a future is in store for their resource-rich country. By the numbers In 2015, Venezuela had the world’s worst economy, according to the International Monetary Fund’s growth estimates: Ethiopia: 8.7% U.S.: 2.5% Canada: 1.2% World: 3.1% Greece: -2.3% Brazil: - 3.8% Venezuela: -10%
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#1. To: Vicomte13, A Pole, paraclete, Socialist (#0)
Yes socialism is great!/s
The economy is revolves around petroleum. They have HUGE oil reserves and capability of petro-mining w/ supporting functions for the infrastructure of and about petro-mining. But, the value of petroleum has fallen.
There problem is not oil its socialism. They stole the oil fields and gave the money away to non producers and they can not figure out what went wrong! Like all socialist they will in time run out of other peoples money!
No, the problem is about planning and diversification of their economy to protect their own people. Venezuela's idiotic government structure is similar to the USA's: filled with incompetentcy and largesse.
True! Incompetent people can bring down even the best of systems.(Bush's,Nixon)
I don't understand the concerns they will sort it out when people are hungry you get revolution and if you haven't noticed it is usually socialist
What bothers me and it should bother everyone is that people are so gullible to believe in socialism. Socialism has to be controlled with a police state. It has to borrow and steal money to bribe mindless people into giving up freedoms for food stamps. It took me all of five minutes to realize how bad socialism is and should be avoided at all cost!
The reason why people are hungry is because they started to believe in socialism and that it could do something it has never done. Work for the people! In the end dictators take over and you either get communism or fascism which really is the same thing. Small group controlling every damn thing!
You don't understand people who have nothing need to be fed and an oil rich nation can afford to do it. It is communism, socialism on steroids, which is bad, if capitalists didn't try to keep everything to themselves, socialism wouldn't get a look in
Scandinavia is as close to socialism as you get in the free world. It's pretty free, pretty prosperous, pretty safe, pretty pretty, pretty well-educated, very stable, and has nothing remotely resembling a police state. So actually democratic socialism works pretty well when people are temperate and want it to. Where socialism (and every other government system) fails is where people are intemperate, violent, and excessively greedy and self-centered. Things never need to get to socialism if people will voluntarily take care of each other. But they don't. Not even in Scandinavia. Which is why they turn to systems to do it for them. Systems always have flaws, but eating, having housing, medicine and education for everybody is always better than having some haggard people dying on the streets, which is what you always have unless there is compulsion to force those who have to give more than they want to to those who don't. People are charitable, but they're not charitable ENOUGH on their own to handle the level of need. Reasonable socialistic systems provide that extra measure of needs, without, however, crushing out the economic opportunities of everybody else. Mainly, there is constraint on how much wealth those at the top can amass. There are still very rich people in Sweden, but not many. It's easier to get comfortable in Sweden if you study and work, and if you don't study and don't work much you will still be better off than in the USA. The tradeoff is that it is harder to become world-class super- rich in Sweden, because redistributive taxation and social programs round things to the middle. Considering the suffering on the bottom if you DON'T do that, contrasted with the mere irritation of the well-off who would like oh-so-much MORE, but who don't really NEED it, it's a good tradeoff.
They were being fed but it wasn't food they were having problems with it was jealousy. They were jealous of what other people had. Some liar told them what they wanted to hear and so they back them with socialism. Guess what it got worse! Jee I wonder why? Maybe the fact that socialism is inferior to capitalism in every way? Socialism steals from the good hard working people and gives it to the lazy corrupt people until everyone is lazy and corrupt! As a Christian I find this appalling and disgusting. One of the first things to get trampled on is real religion ie Christianity. Anyone that defends socialism does not truly understand its full weight to society but believes its just hasn't been run by the right people. There is always an excuse to its failure except that it based on a fairytale of that man can change the laws of physics instead of excepting the laws of physics and dealing with it.
So actually democratic socialism works pretty well when people are temperate and want it to. Norway will implode because of socialism. Its a corrupt system that promotes lazy corrupt minds and hinders free thinking and hard work. Socialism puts all the power into the central government which is ran by? Corrupt men. Whatever the flavor of the day is pushed through as law and the subjects must obey or be squashed for the sack of the government. What if you are terrified of Islamic people and they put a mosque next door to your house? You speak out and they put you in jail for a racist/homophobic/hater. Socialism is ripe for taking power from the people just like hitler did. They do it by splitting the people into groups such as black and white or jewish and Christian or rich and poor.
America has already pretty much imploded without socialism. Norway keeps ticking along just fine, and will continue to. You've got an ideological hobbyhorse and you believe in it firmly. But the thing you believe in is a mirage.
Sweden is inferior to Mississippi before desegregation? Not hardly.
So what you are saying is socialism could never take hold in america
Of course it can. And if the choice is between Swedish socialism and what we have right now, give me Swedish socialism. I'd PREFER to have Christian democracy, with a capitalist system that is adequately taxed to provide effective social services, and a non-imperial military. But nobody is offering that in our politics except Trump, and he is hated by so many.
But that is exactly what the swedish system is. Dump is not offereing the swedish system, he is offering unmitigated cronyism, bullshit foriegn policy and misery in america. do you have any idea of what adequate taxation as per teh swedish system is? certainly the reverse of american policy
I have a very good idea of what adequate taxation is in the United States for the Swedish system. There are TWO prices for it, really. There's the price WITHOUT a massive, aggressive, interventionist overseas military empire, and there's the price with it. Without it, with full-on Swedish-style socialism, about 52% taxation would pay for universal education through college at a good, egalitarian level, universal health insurance and universal pensions. With the American Empire as currently configured, to have Swedish-style social welfare would require taxes in the 79% range. The costs of Empire are massive.
No he isn't.
and the americans would be up for that, can't see it
I can't see it either, except in certain parts of the country. You could get there in Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan which are, rather unsurprisingly, full of Swedes and Finns.
I don't know why people say that. It seems to be based on some American understanding of what socialism is, where socialism = any large program to benefit citizens. The Scandinavian countries are all pretty capitalist. They score high on business freedom, protection of ownership, low corruption and competitiveness. Socialist countries are places where the government owns all the stuff, not places where the government is one of the participants in a functioning stock market. Capitalist and socialist are economic settings. The Scandinavians simply spend a lot of the money they make from being capitalist on stuff benefiting the middle classes, especially working taxpayers. That's a political setting. You can spend money on the public regardless of which economic model you run (Although generally a model that produces enough revenue to cover your spending is a better pick that the opposite. Compare Norway and Venezuela)
I'm using the standard right wing conservative American definitions of terms, the way that the sort of folks who are on this website use them. So, when I say "socialist" to them here, I don't mean "government owns the means of production", I mean a big, thick, heavy social safety net, paid for by taxes. When I say "liberal" here, I don't mean classical free-market laissez-faire capitalism as understood everywhere else in the English speaking world, I mean what Americans mean by it, which is "supports a big thick, heavy social safety net". If I spoke in terms of general use, I would say that Scandinavians are "social democrats", and that I would urge the rise of "Christian social democracy" in the USA. But then nobody but you would know what I was talking about. So I'm using the terms my audience here understands, so they can clearly understand, on their own terms, that they do, indeed, really hate me, because they do NOT support a heavy government-funded social insurance structure. That keeps things clean and clear. In their terms, I am a "liberal socialist statist", who just happens to be pro-life (which - because I am a liberal socialist statist - they cannot believe is really sincere - hence the incessant claims that I am a "Democrat", although I am not and never will be - because Democrats are babykillers practically to a man and woman, and I despise babykillers).
#2. To: Justified (#0)
#3. To: buckeroo (#2)
The economy is revolves around petroleum. They have HUGE oil reserves and capability of petro-mining w/ supporting functions for the infrastructure of and about petro-mining. But, the value of petroleum has fallen.
#4. To: Justified (#3)
#5. To: buckeroo (#4)
No, the problem is about planning and diversification of their economy to protect their own people. Venezuela's idiotic government structure is similar to the USA's: filled with incompetentcy and largesse.
#6. To: Justified (#5)
#7. To: paraclete (#6)
I don't understand the concerns they will sort it out when people are hungry you get revolution and if you haven't noticed it is usually socialist
#8. To: paraclete (#6)
I don't understand the concerns they will sort it out when people are hungry you get revolution and if you haven't noticed it is usually socialist
#9. To: Justified (#7)
#10. To: Justified (#7)
#11. To: paraclete (#9)
You don't understand people who have nothing need to be fed
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#10)
Scandinavia is as close to socialism as you get in the free world. It's pretty free, pretty prosperous, pretty safe, pretty pretty, pretty well-educated, very stable, and has nothing remotely resembling a police state.
#13. To: Justified (#12)
Norway will implode because of socialism.
#14. To: Justified (#11)
Maybe the fact that socialism is inferior to capitalism in every way?
#15. To: Vicomte13 (#10)
#16. To: paraclete (#15)
So what you are saying is socialism could never take hold in america
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#16)
(Edited)
I'd PREFER to have Christian democracy, with a capitalist system that is adequately taxed to provide effective social services, and a non- imperial military. But nobody is offering that in our politics except Trump, and he is hated by so many.
#18. To: paraclete (#17)
#19. To: paraclete (#17)
Dump is not offereing the swedish system, he is offering unmitigated cronyism, bullshit foriegn policy and misery in america.
#20. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
Without it, with full-on Swedish-style socialism, about 52% taxation
#21. To: paraclete (#20)
#22. To: Vicomte13 (#10)
(Edited)
Scandinavia is as close to socialism as you get in the free world.
#23. To: Gnarl (#22)
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