Posted on 03/08/2015 2:24:16 PM PDT by 9thLife
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) Venezuela will begin installing some 20,000 fingerprint scanners at supermarkets nationwide in a bid to stamp out hoarding and panic buying, which the government blames for long lines and widespread shortages of basic goods.
...
On Saturday, President Nicolas Maduro said that seven large private retail chains had voluntarily agreed to install the scanners.
"I ask for the the comprehension of all of Venezuela, to understand this problem, because there is a lot of manipulation taking place," Maduro said at the inauguration of a state-run supermarket.
Economists say the effort is bound to fail. They blame decade-old price controls for destroying local manufacturing and attracting smugglers who can resell the goods on the black market and in Colombia for huge gains.
In recent days, those profits have become juicier as a result of Venezuela's tanking currency. The bolivar has slid 35 percent in the past two weeks on the black market and now trades at nearly one-fortieth the official rate used to import food, according to DolarToday, a website that tracks the illegal rate based on currency trades along the border.
The fall of world oil prices by nearly half since November is also diminishing the supply of dollars available to import everything from milk to cars. Crude oil accounts for 95 percent of Venezuela's exports.
As Venezuela's economic crisis deepens the government is increasingly lashing out at its opponents and the United States, which it says is trying to sow instability and set the stage for a coup.
But many Venezuelans point to Maduro. Recent polls say the embattled president has a 22 percent approval rating, the lowest since the start of the socialist revolution 16 years ago by the late President Hugo Chavez ...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Another socialist paradise. Long lines and scarce goods, much of which is crappy anyway. Castro, Chavez, Maduro—they’re all the same.
Onward, comrade!
mark it. technology like this isn’t really to make YOUR life easier.
Socialists always blame capitalists for sabotaging their experiments.
Which begs the question, how great is a system that can be so easily destroyed by free marketeers?
barak obama wants to turn the USA into socialist Venezuela but worse because even Venezuela hasn’t imposed the socialist net neutrality laws Obama illegally imposed on the Internet.
socialism can never work as shown by Venezuela’s collapse
This idea has the stench of MBAs from Ivy League Schools .... they must be importing professional communists from the Ivy League to fix the amateur system.
Doesn’t look like his house is having a food shortage
Probably a laboratory experiment for someone.
It should be evident to everyone at this point that Venezuela doesn’t have a legitimate government. The country is being held hostage by a narco/petro/criminal gang that is running the place like a prison camp complete with camp commissary vouchers for basic necessities. The same thing is going on in North Korea, and if the bamster gets his way...
what i dont understand is that there are people in AMERICA that have lived in good times before this socialism set in. Why dont these people rise up? They know their country can do better, yet they are willing to sit back and let the govt destroy their country.
That’s exactly what worries me. I keep hoping that we will stand up to the Left. Take to the streets. Civil disobedience.
I, myself, do nothing but worry and hope that someone somewhere is planning an uprising. But I fear for my country.
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