HEY NON-VENEZUELANS, HERE'S A LITTLE HYPERINFLATION TEST FOR YOU:
TEST FOR NON VENEZUELANS:
How much Bs. do you see in this photo?
A) Bs. 15,137.00
B) Bs. 115,037.00
C) Bs. 38,15
Have the answer? Please comment about it!
I hope now that you guys get an idea of what's happening to us here in Venezuela
#share2steem #informationwar #venezuela #contest #money
metalmag25
Hyperinflation sucks, no shit. Why do you almost seem to be happy about people struggling with it, just because you don't like the economic system they prefer, WTF is your problem man?
Inflation doesn't come from normal social programs such as Medicare For All, free college, etc though, otherwise Europe would have endless inflation right now.
Well, by reading your answer I see that you're implying a lot of things:
Well, If there's a doubt, the photo above was taken by me. I live here. So to try to explain to me what's happening here is pretty much pointless. Just FYI: Those bills only add about $0,20 and the rest of the low denominations I have don't add much. So no, I'm not happy with that, to have a ton of bills that are worthless.
Well, I'm a voter of my country, so I'm entitled to criticize it and point what I think about it if I want to. And yes. I have a problem with that. You can read most of the posts of my blog writing about that. But just for the record: We have a different view of socialism. You maybe wish the fun part, but we live it fully.
You're right. But you maybe call that socialism and it's not. Just FYI, UHC, free college tuition, etc. have been adopted here since the 19th century. Hugo Chávez wasn't the one who brought it. He just changed the name of some programs and spend more on them while we had an oil bonanza, and preferred to spend on cuban doctors to work in our health system instead of relying on Venezuelan professionals. That's it. That what you mention is not the problem and that by itself IS NOT SOCIALISM. The countries that have this system and it's working well have a healthy market economy that is not run by the state. Add a ton of corruption from government officials, political persecution and high crime rates and oil prices going down plus high debt and you have Venezuela.
My advice? Don't imply things. Read more about fully socialist countries, like us. Not about the perfect FREE MARKET nordic paradise of less than 30 million culturally homogeneous, responsible people who are happy to pay almost 50% of taxes to have that Paradise. Or social democracies that more or less have these system a working with kind of success. It's not the same. We're pretty much closer to Zimbauwe.
And BTW, the answer is C.
Oh, ok I think I agree with almost everything you wrote there except the definition of socialism. Since this is Steemit, and virtually everyone is some kind of hardcore conservative or anarchist, I assumed you were just one of those, repeating the talking point of "socialism is bad, because the situation in Venezuela is bad and they have universal healthcare, so..."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Venezuela still has private supermarkets, retailers, car manufacturers, etc, right? If it does, then at least a part of the economy is not socialist, while other parts, like the healthcare system, is socialist.
I think what happened in Venezuela is horrible mismanagement of the economy and government by people who either don't know what the hell they're doing, or are forced to do it because of corruption. You said it yourself, Scandinavia is basically a paradise, despite or probably because they have a mixed economy with some industries nationalized and some in private hands. If any industry is not run by the government in Venezuela, then it's also a mixed economy, maybe it's closer to the socialism end of the spectrum than Scandinavia, though
Yes, we still have them, kind of. There's a rigorous price control, lots of enterprises of different kinds have been expropriated by the government for "strategic purposes", including big supermarkets, actually. So private companies have to play by the government rules, not even the constitution.
I believe you think that social democracies and socialism are the same, and that's the point where we probably disagree. Nordic countries (and most of Europe) are social democracies (Welfare state + free market). Venezuela is socialist (State controlled economy). Cuba is communist (State owns everything).
The problem with social democracies are pretty much the same as Free Market capitalist countries. What I believe is that there is not an specific formula to be a fully developed country. What is successful in the Nordic countries, and part of Europe, may not be successful in the US, or the rest of the Americas. It depends mostly on the people.
If most US-citizens are law-abiding, agree to pay low taxes but choose to pay for healthcare the way they do: Medicare for the elderly, free market competition for the rest, it's OK. It depends on the individual to choose what they want to do. Just think about it: Tell a US-citizen who pays about 30% of taxes (Income + sales), that in order to get UBI, and to pay for free education infrastructure, they have to pay 50% of taxes. They won't do it, even if it works. Some even will say: "Tax the rich!", and it just doesn't work like that. Even in the nordic countries, entreprises only pay 20% of income tax, even less than the US. It depends on the culture of their citizens.
It's like a new capitalist government trying to tell Venezuelans that every state owned company (including the oil industry), has to be sold to private entities to create revenue and help the nation: They won't buy it. Even in the situation we have right now. It depends on the people's will to change their culture, and to be truly citizens.
Ok, that does sound very different from the social democracy I know
I suppose there's a problem with the words here, because when people in for example the US say they want "socialism", they mean "more socialism" to arrive at the level of social programmes that Sweden has. Every country on earth has some socialism, as every country has a military (except for like 2 tiny islands thats still have universal healthcare). I agree we should have a different term for Venezuela than we have for Sweden or Cuba, I think maybe "controlled economy" would be better, or something like that.
I looked ot up now, and in Sweden you don't pay anything for the first 2'000$/year, 32% for the next 50'000$/year, 52% until 70'000$/year and 57% for everything above that. So they still have progressive taxes, the reason why the middle class pays such a large part of the taxes is because there is so little inequality
If you could choose between copying everything the US does in Venezuela, or copying everything a European country of your choosing does, which would you take?
Well, here we are about 30 million people, pretty much the same as Canada. And we have free college tuition (I graduated from a public university). We have UBI but it has never worked well. I believe that it's because the government directly runs the main source of income: The oil industry. And because of that, we are fully dependable of that.
I would stick with having the welfare model that we actually have. BUT ONLY if all oil industry activities are controlled by prívate entities paying proper taxes and royalties. We are a medium sized country in terms of population, so I think it would work if all people (even low income people) pays a reasonable income tax (maybe 10-15%). Because there's The other thing: Governments tend to be populist and not tax lower income people, but they also participate from all the government programs. So, it's pretty much unfair to pay for some people who work also and don't pay anything at all.
What I'm saying is this model can be applied here if a lot of things change, from the government to people's mentality. People just don't like to pay taxes. They see it as a burden because everything that they're intended for is not working.
And just check this, this is a theory of mine (i could be wrong): The larger the country, the larger the inequality. I don't think it's just because of bad policies.
Yes, "the larger the country the larger the inequality" probably holds up. But I doubt it's because having a large country means its programs increase inequality more, if such a large country was divided into many countries, then the inequality within that same region would only grow, certainly geographically (Europe vs US, the US has a way lower geographic inequality than Europe because Europe doesn't have common social programs to counter geographic inequality which also contributes to inequality at large).
I agree that most of Venezuela's social programs, mostly those that European countries also have, would probably work just fine if its source of funding wasn't so insecure, like the oil market is. But do you also think Venezuela's apparently incredibly tight price controls are a good economic tool to use, for the benefit of the working class? If you're not for those controls, wouldn't that basically just mean you're in support of a European-style social democracy with a bit more social programs (like UBI)?
Sidepoint: If you want to convince an American of supporting UBI, you can try calling it "Social Security For All", that is more self-explaining and sounds less like "scary socialism", because it is kind of literally just taking a program for seniors and giving it to everyone, like Medicare For All which is hugely popular by now
Definitely not. It never worked here. Everytime there is price control, there's scarcity. Everytime. And a black market of everytring controlled grows. Most of the basic food items I buy i only find them thru black market.Or else I have to wait in line for a couple hours outside of the supermarket to buy it with no guarantee to get it before they run out of it.
I'm not in support of it. What i'm saying is that I believe that a new government can't take away benefits from people who already has them as settled law. So, the only way to make things better is improving the economy in a way to get more revenue and at the same time change people's culture. I'm saying that, comparing Venezuela's population to some developed countries that have UBI, it can be viable to have an European-style social democracy. And we actually did in the '70s. But only dependance in oil revenues makes this economy really volatile. And that affects pretty much the same way either we live in a capitalist country or in a social democracy.
C