By Avve Diana @Adobe Stock
Voters Are Collateral Damage
The US is accustomed to economic growth almost every year. Looking at a chart on GDP growth over the last century, the impression, explains Francis Menton, is of near-continuous and extremely robust growth, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Commerce Department). ( here is a chart from USA Facts).
During the so-called great recession of 2008-09, barely a ripple was registered. Robust growth, however, is not true for all countries. Consider Venezuela if you want to see the opposite situation, suggests our Manhattan Contrarian.
Venezuela elected the socialist Hugo Chavez in 1998, and he and his ideologically aligned successor Nicolas Maduro have ruled ever since.
Getting reliable economic data from authoritarian Venezuela is not easy. The best Mr. Menton can find for Venezuela’s GDP since the Chavez election and to the present is from Statista.
Warns Mr. Menton: Do not take this data from Statista as gospel.
Mr. Menton please tell us why you don’t trust Statista.
The main source is necessarily the Venezuelan government, which is highly suspect. The large run-up from 2004 to 2013 is probably mostly not real, being created by a combination of blow-out government spending (counted as real … by economists) and increasing oil prices.
On the other hand, the post-2013 collapse is undoubtedly very real. In fact, the collapse is likely understated, because the Venezuelan government would clearly cook the books in any way it could. Even if you think the current figure is mostly accurate, it leaves Venezuelan GDP today at well less than it was in the year 2000, and barely more than a quarter of what it was in 2013.
What are some of the events that brought about such an economic collapse in Venezuela?
Apologists for the regime often cite the rapid fall of oil prices that occurred in 2014 and thereafter. But that defense prompts the Manhattan Contrarian to point to Texas, a state like Venezuela whose economy is highly focused on the oil industry.
… yet its economy has boomed in the decade since 2014. The same goes for many other oil and gas producing states and countries.
What distinguishes Venezuela from economically successful places, especially in the US, can be summed up in one word: Socialism. Venezuela has embraced one after another destructive economic policies, which Mr. Menton recaps as Socialism.
Tougher Sanctions Would Destroy Maduro’s Bottom Line
Venezuela citizens who have stuck around for years under Maduro’s failed government aren’t suddenly leaving their country because of poverty. They don’t believe they have a better future at home. The Biden administration is rumored to be worried that sanctions against Maduro’s policies would spur wider migration. To curtail immigration from Venezuela to the US, the US needs to help restore freedom.
Kamala Waxing Poetic: Vibes and Joy?
Mr. Menton, readers would like some Venezuela-type examples of Kamala “waxing poetic:”
• extensive price controls, particularly on food
• huge increases in government spending, notably on housing subsidies and redistributions
• destroying the independence of the Supreme Court and of election authorities
• “free” public healthcare
The Manhattan Contrarian also warns readers that we now have a presidential nominee of the Democratic Party who refuses to tell voters what she will do if elected. Kamala Harris is a combination of silent and vague on what economic policies she would implement. To Mr. Menton’s keen eye, it looks much like what Venezuela has been up to.
… what little Ms. Harris has had to say so far on economic policy bears a remarkable resemblance to the Venezuelan program, notably price controls and middle-class entitlements. Since she has gone silent, we have little to go on.
In The Wall Street Journal, Kimberley A. Strassel focuses on Senate Majority Leader Schumer letting his mask slip during a recent interview with CNN:
Senator Schumer’s Obfuscation:
[Schumer] declared he was “committed” to everything Ms. Harris has outlined so far—the child tax-credit blowout, the new housing entitlement and all the rest. The moderator at one point noted cost estimates were $2 trillion; Mr. Schumer didn’t bat an eye. Reminded that even liberals were panning her price-control proposals, Mr. Schumer brushed them aside. This is “a good thing to do,” he assured, and he later promised price controls on drugs, too.
It sure doesn’t sound like a good thing to destroy the independence of election authorities and the Supreme Court. Yet Kamala Harris and fellow Democrats look poised to push measures to destroy the judiciary’s independence.
One of (Schummer’s) first priorities would be the federal voting takeover that Democrats have been laboring to impose since 2021. Also important, said Mr. Schumer, is changing the Supreme Court; everything is on the table—including term limits. And “we’ve got to do more on climate change.”
Even Venezuela isn’t crazy enough to try to solve “climate change,” cautions Mr. Menton.
The entire difference between economic success and failure for a country is good economic policy. I certainly hope that the voters will be smart enough to look through the current program of obfuscation by the Democrats to see what they actually have planned for us.
Mark Twain, is credited with saying, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
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