Hugo Chávez, the little socialist fool of Venezuela, continues his rampage over his own people. In this latest article he announces that he has declared war on his own people, i.e., anyone that opposes him. What you are seeing are the logical conclusions of socialism.
This from Bloomberg:
June 2 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he’s declaring an “economic war” against the “bourgeoisie” after business chambers criticized his handling of the economy and the performance of nationalized companies.
Chavez threatened to nationalize the country’s largest food maker, Empresas Polar SA, saying that the company isn’t “indispensable.” Chavez said Polar is manipulating workers into attacking his policies and he challenged company President Lorenzo Mendoza to see who will last longer. Mendoza, Chavez said, won’t get into heaven because he’s wealthy.
“You’ve declared an economic war against me, so I accept your challenge, stateless bourgeoisie,” Chavez said today during a visit to a state-run vegetable oil company. “I’m declaring an economic war with the help of the people and workers. War is war, my friend. Don’t complain to me later.”
… Continue reading Chávez Wields The Brutal Fist of Socialism
This is a reprint of an article from Business Week on Hugo Chávez’s latest failure of socialist planning. Anyone who has read about the early days of the Bolshevik dictatorship in Russia will find this familiar.
I’ve portrayed Chávez as an international clown whose ignorance is only matched by his arrogance and his megalomania. It is very difficult to get rid of caudillos like Chávez when they control the armed forces. Usually they end badly (for the strong man) or, like Castro, they evolve into a totalitarian dictatorship in order to protect the mafia in control of the country. I believe Venezuela will end up like Cuba.
I thought of sending Chávez a Spanish copy of Economics in One Lesson, but that would be a futile gesture on my part. Perhaps I should send one to Sean Penn, his ardent apologist. Wait, Sean might wish to have me jailed for calling Chávez a dictator.
It is sad to see this happen at the end of history.
IN DEPTH March 11, 2010, 11:00AM EST
A Food Fight for Hugo Chavez
With his popularity sagging, Venezuela’s fiery President is seizing supermarkets from owners. But can he keep stores stocked?
By Geri Smith
Caracas – It’s 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas’ San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fernández tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. “How dare you tell me I can’t have one of the larger bags?” she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.
Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. “I am so fed up with these food shortages,” Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. “People get desperate and start behaving like animals.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s response to the food shortages: find a scapegoat, in this case supermarket owners. On Jan. 17, the mercurial leader expropriated six Exito stores, controlled by France’s Groupe Casino. A month later he seized Cada, another Casino chain, with 35 supermarkets and eight distribution centers.
El Presidente’s efforts to transform his country into a Cuban-style socialist state are sputtering. With its vast oil wealth, Venezuela shouldn’t suffer from shortages, yet inefficient farms, government takeovers of supermarkets, and a 50% currency devaluation in January have thrown the food supply into disarray. That’s bad news for Chávez, whose anti-capitalist message and ceaseless drive to undermine U.S. influence in Latin America have made him Washington’s biggest headache in the region. Chávez’s approval rating among Venezuelans has dropped to about 45% from 70% three years ago.
Supplying low-cost food to the poor has been a centerpiece of Chávez’s presidency. He has expropriated food processors, stores, and more than 6 million acres of farms and ranches, convinced that the government can feed Venezuela better than the private sector does. Under state ownership, though, production has suffered. From 1999 to 2008, per capita, sugar cane was off by 8%, fruit declined by 25%, and beef production dropped by 38%, according to Carlos Machado, an expert in agriculture at the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies, a business school in Caracas. “The cooperatives have failed and our cattle ranching has been decimated,” Machado says. … Continue reading “How To Ruin A Perfectly Nice Country,” By Hugo Chávez
OK. Here is the opportunity. Reader Dylan reads this blog, obviously interested in ideas that run counter to what he has learned. He is very critical of capitalism. Can we win his heart and mind? That’s my goal and, because of his background (see below), I think he could be convinced that capitalism is, well … good. Let’s give him a try. I apologize in advance for the length of this piece. Now that I’ve written it, I see that Dylan and I are quite windy.
For those of you joining us late, Dylan commented on my article “Health Care in America: We Now Join Europe,” my lament over the passage of the health care bill. Dylan thought I should be more willing to accept these government programs as a social safety net. I took his comment and made it into an article, “A Comment on Health Care Reform: Winning Hearts and Minds.”
Here is Dylan’s response to my answer to his original comment. I’ve taken the liberty to highlight some of the key terms and ideas in his response:
Jeff
Thanks for the response.
And yes this is a debate i’d like to have with you.
First to your questions:
“If there was a better system of distributing wealth and bringing the most economic benefits to the most people at the least cost, [and the most freedom] would you be in favor of it?” – Yes as long as it was sustainable.
“If I told you that your assumptions about capitalism were wrong and that everything you were taught about capitalism was wrong, would you believe me?” – Maybe put you’d have to do more than tell me. Youd need to explain this to me. I like [Marx's] Capital Vol.1 but im sure you would rather i read the book you mentioned, which in the spirit of fairness i shall go and look at.
“If I told you that almost everything you read in the popular press and what you see as commentary on TV was faith-based economics, would you be willing to question them?” Most definitely (btw i already think this so score one for common ground!)
“If I told you that your views would achieve exactly the opposite of what you intended, would you blindly follow them regardless of the consequences?” No. Im not against capitalism, im against the zero sum mechanics of it. You i am led to believe believe in free market capitalism, i would prefer a capitalism with more of a social conscious and hence direct state intervention such as free education and healthcare which i believe are fundamental human rights.
You then go on to say – quite condescendingly [JH: mea culpa, but you started it with "fundamentialist"] i must add because we can compare letters after our names whenever you want – that i have not studied economics and that I unquestioningly accept everything i was told. If that isnt a playground put down im not quite sure what to call it.
To be most correct i am an social anthropologist (you know, one of those public academics trained to think critically). My background is in social justice so granted i am coming from a different point of view than most economics Phds. Added to which I do not have a full economics background as you do. However that does not mean i cant cite academics such as Gillian Tett who now writes for the FT who have shown that much of the belief of free market economists have many of the same cultural qualities as other fundamentalisms. Yup, you got it, those religious ones. Some people say that sort of fundamentalism and faith in free market capitalism since the late 1970s is how we got into the economic mess were currently in, i prefer to think of it in terms of blatant ponzi inspired theft.
Also i’d like to hope youd know that a persons’ background on theory and history might be far more solid than one emotional post about health care could reveal (especially as i’d just woken up and had my coffee). In fact in my personal work I have written much on the collision between colonialism and capitalism, how the two are related and the conduits, mechanisms, motives and personalities between both. My theoretical is not Marxist, but it does refer often to Marx, David Harvey, Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxembourg – all intellectuals who could take your position to task quite easily. It doesnt mean they are right and you are wrong, or vice versa, it means you and I both think there are different answers to the questions of the times. … Continue reading Winning Hearts and Minds: Part II
I received this comment on my article lamenting the passage of the health care bill, “Health Care in America: We Now Join Europe.” The person who wrote it has been following this blog for a while and he has added good commentary in the past. I don’t mean to pick on him, but it [...]
This is from Cato’s Michael Cannon who is their resident expert on health care.
Myth: This legislation won’t cut Medicare.
Reductions in Medicare outlays finance about half of the legislation’s $1 trillion in new entitlement spending. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office verifies that the legislation would reduce Medicare benefits. President Obama’s top Medicare actuary [...]
America has now joined Europe as just another quasi-socialist state with the passage of the health care bill. Our new system is similar to France’s. No one believes the Democrat’s promises about cost containment or the true cost of this legislation. The result will be higher costs for everyone, higher taxes for almost anyone [...]
I republished the “Government Health Care Kills” article on ZeroHedge where I also publish (same stuff as here at The Daily Capitalist). It had about 3,000 reads and 120 comments. The comments were mostly negative, especially from Canadian and UK readers who defended their systems and denigrated the U.S. health care system. Many comments were in the nature of a screed. Here is a response I made to their comments that you may find interesting.
The proper way to analyze the delivery of health care is to understand how and why our system is flawed. I would argue that the free market delivers any product or service better and more efficiently than any government system. I think most of you would agree in general with that statement, but you don’t see it applying to health care.
The U.S. health care system is highly regulated. We have no real free market health care system. As a result the delivery of health care is highly distorted by the government and the result has been an expensive and often burdensome system. This has been going on since 1965 with the passage of Medicare. The rigged tax code, the prevention of competition, the lack of control by consumers of their health care dollars, meddlesome regulation, and the burden of Medicare costs being borne by non-Medicare privately insured consumers, have lead to our current mess.
Yet I don’t see similar problems in the delivery of other goods and services, say food for example, because the government does not regulate and control it. Yet food is more necessary to sustaining life than health care.
With all of these flaws, almost all (but not all) innovations, new tools and drugs come from the U.S. That is only because of the profit system that can bring big rewards to innovators and entrepreneurs.
I have studied the health care systems of other countries that have some form of government universal health care and they are all losing money, resort to rationing (cutbacks in services), and have a shrinking population base with which to support an aging population. From Cato: … Continue reading Government Health Care Kills, Part II
I just read the 11 page summary of the President’s Proposal on health care reform put out by the White House. Fellow Americans, you have no idea of the financial havoc this plan, or the House or Senate plans, will cause to the health care system specifically or to the economy in general.
The rules and regulations are so invasive that we will be forever mired in endless bureaucratic control of this most important segment of our lives. These plans, while they say they give us choice, are as much “top down” as if the government were running the health care system as in the Canadian or UK systems.
The visions I had were from the movie “Brazil” where huge rows of gray offices provided meaningless jobs for bureaucrats who never understood in the least what their part in the evil system was.
Everything in the Proposal is a lie and so counter-intuitive to the Laws of Economics that one can only assume blatant ignorance of economics or a perverse desire to centralize the role of the state in our affairs regardless of the consequences. I think it is both.
Here is the White House’s summary of this Proposal:
- It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.
- It sets up a new competitive health insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have.
- It brings greater accountability to health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
- It will end discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
- It puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years – and about $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.
I don’t have to remind you that in every program the federal government has ever implemented costs have been grossly underestimated intentionally by lying, or by incompetence, or both. Recently disclosed FOIA disclosures reveal that Lyndon Johnson lied about the costs of Medicare because he knew that he couldn’t get the bill through if the true costs were known. Even so the costs have risen geometrically above the worst estimates back then.
I don’t believe that the Obama Administration is just well meaning but misguided. … Continue reading The President’s Health Care Proposal
China has created a new housing bubble. Here are some excellent reports on what the bubble looks like and some ominous glimpses on how it may end. Like all bubbles it will burst and the economic fallout will impact China’s economy and the U.S.’s. The frenzy indicates that the blow-up will [...]
If it weren’t for Hugo Chávez, my favorite Latin American dictator, life would be pretty dull. The guy is a walking, talking economics lesson. He’s so easy to pick on because he has the Sadim touch (you know, instead of turning things into gold like Midas, he turns things into crap).
[...]
I get a number of e-mails from readers seeking advice, usually investment advice. I politely advise them that I do not give investment advice. Last year I received messages of a theme that can be described as folks who felt The Great Collapse was happening. Armageddon and that type of thing.
Here is some [...]
By Jeff Harding.
Here’s a bit of nostalgia from 1948. A cartoon from Harding College (no relation) extolling the virtues of capitalism. It’s a bit corny and jingoistic, but it’s fun and worth watching. 1948 was the beginning of the Cold War and the feeling at the time was “us vs. them.” The USSR [...]
By Jeff Harding.
This story about Mercury Marine is one of the more fascinating events that has come out of our economic crisis. The players in it consists of diehard labor unionists, mislead workers, a major company, and two cities desperate for jobs.
Let me first state my position on [...]
This is a startling article (Hat Tip to Lloyd G.) about who’s in charge in Washington and Detroit. I don’t need to say much about this; the article speaks for itself.
The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.
WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
Brian Deese, who interrupted his law school career, is the little-seen force behind the revamping of the American auto industry.
But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.
Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.
“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”
But now, according to those who joined him in the middle of his crash course about the automakers’ downward spiral, he has emerged as one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama’s biggest experiment yet in federal economic intervention.
While far more prominent members of the administration are making the big decisions about Detroit, it is Mr. Deese who is often narrowing their options.
A month ago, when the administration was divided over whether to support Fiat’s bid to take over much of Chrysler, it was Mr. Deese who spoke out strongly against simply letting the company go into liquidation, according to several people who were present for the debate. … Continue reading The DC Kids
Why do they pick on the poor Angles and Saxons?
It seems to be open season on Angles and Saxons. Our European friends say that the “Anglo-Saxon business model” is too dangerous to the world for it to continue as it is.
“Self-regulation is finished, laisser faire is finished, the idea of an all powerful market which is always right is finished,” says France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy. “The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system,” says Peer Steinbruck, Germany’s finance minister.
Alfred Gusenbauer, the Federal Chancellor of Austria, recently wrote this stinging comment on the Anglo-Saxon Neo-Liberal model:
[A]bsolute freedom for the market will lead to Rockefeller’s dog getting the milk that a poor child needs for healthy development … This distributional quandary lies at the heart of the capitalist system, which is one of never-ending competition fueled by the drive to maximise profits. In such a world, there is no room for a social conscience.
This is coming from a country that may go bankrupt for making loans to Russia and Eastern Europe equal to 85% of its GDP. … Continue reading Failure of the Anglo-Saxon Business Model
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