Hugo Chavez Post Mortem: How to ruin an economy in a few basic steps

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Hugo3

Time and time again, those who seek to control the law of supply and demand find out that it is as immune to tinkering as the law of gravity or the speed of light.   And those rulers foolish enough to deny this fact end up ruining their countries.

Hugo Chavez followed the instructions of his stepfather Fidel.  And now Venezuelans face the same sort of painful consequences as those experienced by the Cuban people. Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua are all following the same instructions.

The U.S.A. is nowhere near the edge of this suicide cliff, but it sure does seem to be headed in the same general direction.

Hugo Chavez’s voodo economics

The late Venezuelan president’s effort to stiff-arm a basic economic tenet has brought the economy to the brink of disaster.

By Brad Schiller
Emeritus professor of economics, American University. 
Los Angeles Times
March 24, 2013

Two years before his death, Hugo Chavez tried to repeal the law of supply and demand, which says that free markets set the price: the higher the demand, the higher the price. Every producer who was willing to sell at that equilibrium price would be able to do so and every consumer willing and able to pay that price could acquire the product.

Chavez despised the law because he believed it robbed the poor and unjustly profited producers. In its place, he persuaded the Venezuelan legislature to enact the 2011 Law on Fair Costs and Prices, a price-setting mechanism to ensure greater social justice. A newly created National Superintendency of Fair Costs and Prices was empowered to establish fair prices at both the wholesale and retail levels. More than 500,000 price edicts have been issued. Companies that violate these price controls are subject to fines, seizures and expropriation.

In all cases, the prices set by the government have been below market — sometimes far below. This has caused production cutbacks, market shortages, massive government subsidies, runaway inflation and extraordinary government intervention. The most flagrant subsidy is for gasoline. Venezuelans pay only 4 to 6 cents per gallon for gasoline, the cheapest in the world. But it costs Petroleos de Venezuela, the government-owned oil company, close to $2 a gallon to extract, refine and distribute it. With domestic consumption now running about 600,000 barrels a day, the financial loss on subsidized oil is roughly $20 billion a year.

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7 thoughts on “Hugo Chavez Post Mortem: How to ruin an economy in a few basic steps”

  2. Venezuela’s economy is growing at 5.5%.
    Unemployment is falling to below 7%.
    Stock exchange grew faster in 2012 in Venezuela then anywhere else on the planet.
    Inflation fallen from >100% to around 20%.
    Extreme poverty fell 72%.

    • Whenever facts are inconvenient, you can always depend on leftist dictatorships to make up their own statistics. From the same folks who bring you the “Cuba is a democracy” mantra, we hear how Venezuela’s economy is doing peachy.

  3. In response to Lukewyland: Your fairy tale statistics must have been cooked up by Chavistas. Read more widely and more carefully.
    Start here: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/06/venezuelas-economy-under-chavez-by-the-numbers/
    Then go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20795781
    And here: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-07/for-ch-vezs-successor-venezuelas-economy-looms-large
    And… even if those phony statistics were correct, boasting of “only” 20 percent inflation is like boasting of having only three blocked arteries.
    And… don’t forget the murder rate, second highest in the world.

  5. Me think luke got nothing better to do in life than to drink the Chavez kool-aid. Well look where it took Chavez, to his grave…

    Venezuela is going to its grave too because of Chavez’s policies. Now they have to import food and supplies because confiscated farms and factories stand idle. Only the oil revenue is keeping Venezuela afloat but, that may not last too long because of the sheer economic mismanagement implemented by Chavez and his cronies.

    The history proven reality since 1917 is that any country that adopts the Communist, Marxist, Socialist model sooner or later ends up ruined. China is the only exception because even though still is a Communist form of government it has adopted the Capitalist model for its economy.

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