Venezuela

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 07:49
VIEWED: 1301
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DREAMTROVE

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 6:12 AM

Famine reigns, chaos looms, and the economy collapses. The average wage is now 10% of the cost of living, the worst economic disparity in the world. But it's a great weightloss plan.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/02/20/study-venezuelans-lost-19-lb-o
n-average-over-past-year-due-to-lack-food.html

SIGNYM

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 7:25 AM

It's a nightmare. But that's what happens when you depend on one commodity for everything.

Venezuelans have land, they have a decent climate, they even have a great supply of oil! But they used their oil to buy everything ... pork, milk, rice, corn, toilet paper - things they should have been producing themselves. That approach set them up for skimming and corruption at transit points, and when the price of oil fell their economy tanked with it.

They should have traded with Cuba: oil for experienced farmers.

Venezuela is one example of why each nation should be as self-sufficient as possible. In fact, there should be fractal self-sufficiency, just to tide cities and regions over in case of emergency.

Since the USA's biggest export is ... dollars and Treasuries ... what happens when OUR biggest export loses value? Yeesh!

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

DREAMTROVE

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 7:49 AM

The govt has been primarily using that oil to buy weapons to stay in power.
That said, it's not the fall in the price of oil per se because they haven't been selling the oil to china at fair market prices, but at special arrangement low prices, the way US oil colonies always did. As soon as you remove such deals, you see a radical change in the economy, as I saw in Trinidad in the 1980s.

There is an opportunity here, though, to learn from the native populations. Hunter gatherers don't have the ability to support a large population in most of the world, but the amazon produces billions of tons of food, and populations seem to never be checked by lack of food. Half of Venezuela is rainforest, and I'm sure the native population is having no food shortage. They might be able to show them alternative ways of surviving.

Next, of course, there's the absurd economic collapse. Per capita GDP sits around $4000 but median income sits under $300 now. The cost of living is about ten times that.