The Venezuelan economy is in a shambles as it reaches the end-phase of its socialist “Bolivarian Revolution.” The socialist experiment in Venezuela has left it with some stats that are hard to look at. The Economist reports:
- Venezuela has the world’s worst-performing economy among countries not at war.
- GDP fell by more than a third between 2013 and 2017.
- Inflation could pass a million per cent this year, says the IMF.
- The country with the world’s largest oil reserves cannot import enough food and medicine.
- More than 2m Venezuelans have fled.
As America picks over the ideas of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it would pay to remember just how similar they sound to the idea of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” That has happened in Venezuela. Take a look at the devaluation of the Venezuelan peso in the chart below. There is perhaps no better measure of a country’s government than the performance of its currency.
