Posted on 02/21/2019 8:21:06 AM PST by gattaca
The first time I couldn’t buy food at the grocery store, I was 15 years old. It was 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela, and I had spent more than an hour in line waiting. When I got to the register, I noticed I had forgotten my ID that day. Without the ID, the government rationing system would not let the supermarket sell my family the full quota of food we needed. It was four days until the government allowed me to buy more.
This was fairly normal for me. All my life, I lived under socialism in Venezuela until I left and came to the United States as a student in 2016. Because the regime in charge imposed price controls and nationalized the most important private industries, production plummeted. No wonder I had to wait hours in lines to buy simple products such as toothpaste or flour.
And the shortages went far beyond the supermarket.
My family and I suffered from blackouts and lack of water. The regime nationalized electricity in 2007 in an effort to make electricity “free.” Unsurprisingly, this resulted in underinvestment in the electrical grid. By 2016, my home lost power roughly once a week.
Read more commentary:
Sen. Dick Durbin: With Maduro out, democracy is finally coming to Venezuela — from within
Maduro is consolidating power in Venezuela. The international community must intervene.
Venezuela's mafia state under Nicolas Maduro is almost over. We can finally push him and his thugs out.
Our water situation was even worse. Initially, my family didn’t have running water for only about one day per month, but as the years passed we sometimes went several weeks straight without it.
For all these problems, the regime has blamed an iguana, right-wing sabotage and even the weather.
A rich country, wasted resources The excuses for these shortages were hollow: In reality, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world to use for electricity, and three times more fresh water resources per person than the United States. The real reason my family went without water and electricity was the socialist economy instituted by dictators Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
The welfare programs, many minimum-wage hikes and nationalizations implemented by their regimes resulted in a colossal government deficit that the central bank covered by simply printing more money — leading to rampant inflation. Now, prices double every few weeks, and the standard of living continues to plummet.
Mosaic depicts late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 30, 2019. Mosaic depicts late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 30, 2019. (Photo11: JUAN BARRETO, AFP/Getty Images)
I watched what was once one of the richest countries in Latin America gradually fall apart under the weight of big government.
I didn’t need to look at statistics to see this but rather at my own family. When Chavez took office in 1999, my parents were earning several thousand dollars a month between the two of them. By 2016, due to inflation, they earned less than $2 a day. If my parents hadn’t fled the country for Spain in 2017, they’d now be earning less than $1 a day, the international definition of extreme poverty. Even now, the inflation rate in Venezuela is expected to reach 10 million percent this year.
Venezuela has become a country where a woeful number of children suffer from malnutrition, and where working two full-time jobs will pay for only 6 pounds of chicken a month.
American liberals embrace same failed policies Though so many of us Venezuelans fled to the USA to escape from the destructive consequences of socialism, liberal politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., have praised the same kind of policies that produced famine, mass exodus and soaring inflation in Venezuela.
Even worse, in recent weeks, Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard have mischaracterized the protests against Maduro and condemned President Donald Trump’s widely supported moves to help end Maduro’s dictatorship.
Additionally, many congressional Democrats support Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, proposals that would nationalize the health insurance industry, guarantee everyone who wants it a job and massively raise taxes, increasing government intervention in the economy like few countries except Cuba and Venezuela have seen before. Proponents think that they can give all Americans quality health care, housing and everything for free and that somehow, politicians can do a better job at running a business than the business owners themselves.
Daniel Di Martino, center, with his parents in Caracas, Venezuela, in December 2016. Daniel Di Martino, center, with his parents in Caracas, Venezuela, in December 2016. (Photo11: Family handout)
These proposals would skyrocket the budget deficit and national debt, which just reached a record $22 trillion. If that is not enough, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed paying for the proposal by asking the Federal Reserve to print money. This is exactly what produced Venezuela’s nightmare.
Even so, liberal economist Paul Krugman recently argued in a column that “whenever you see someone invoking Venezuela as a reason not to consider progressive policy ideas, you know right away that the person in question is uninformed, dishonest, or both.”
I can assure Mr. Krugman that I’m neither uninformed nor dishonest. Of course, it’s true that neither Medicare for All nor a wealth tax alone would turn the United States into Venezuela overnight. No single radical proposal would do that. However, if all or most of these measures are implemented, they could have the same catastrophic consequences for the American people that they had for Venezuela.
In his recent State of the Union address, President Trump said: “America will never be a socialist country.” I sincerely hope that the president is right, and that every American can resist the lure of false promises — so this great country can always shine above the dark cloud of socialism, and avoid Venezuela’s fate.
Daniel Di Martino is a Venezuelan expatriate and Young Voices contributor studying economics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Follow him on Twitter @DanielDiMartino.
Slowly?? It’s already here for cripes sake.
I’m from Sweden, and everything that I saw there in the 70s, is now here. We live in a nanny state with capitalism that is 100% politically connected. All the major publicly traded companies of the USA are in absolute lock step with the left of our government.
People are in denial.
Actually, it won’t happen slowly when it happens.
The end will come when the Petrodollar loses its exclusive status and collapses. Or if someone invented a truly practical alternative energy source.
It’s comical that the only way to sustain socialism in the US will be eliminated by the environmental wackos if they ever got their way.
The international community must intervene....Good. Let Socialist Europe fix’em NOT the USA.
Excellent article.
Call it TYRANNY all the time. Use the leftist statist tactic of repetition whenever possible.
Because he will parrot the company line. There’s really no such thing as a “Nobel Prize in Economics”; was he on the board of directors for ENRON?
He’s a douche
Author is half-right.
It will destroy America. But very slowly.
We are the wealthiest nation by far and it will take decades to hollow us out.
Plus the entire world runs on Fed printed fiat money.
The destruction will be agonizingly slow.
Maduro is consolidating power in Venezuela. The international community must intervene.
Venezuela's mafia state under Nicolas Maduro is almost over. We can finally push him and his thugs out.
“People are in denial.”
It’s the frog in the pot syndrome.
I found the article on USA Today and was not able to post because of copyright, so I found it on another site, this one. It appeared to be exactly the same. I didn’t notice that ad in the text. It’s my fault for not checking after the first several paragraphs.
Assuming a student visa, did you overstay, get extensions or were you kept here by invitation?
Apparently he was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to attend Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
https://young-voices.com/advocate/daniel-dimartino/
It’s not there now. Could be is was when you cut and pasted for posting and then the site removed it. Whatever :)
I asked the moderator to remove those sentences.
Thank you.
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