RE: HEY NON-VENEZUELANS, HERE'S A LITTLE HYPERINFLATION TEST FOR YOU:
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.
I think the Venezuelan conflict with the US and the resulting embargo is probably a large reason why the Venezueland economy is doing so poorly now. What exactly do you think are the deeper reasons for that? The US clearly doesn't have anything against Venezuela's economic system, they trade happily with China and are allies with the EU, so what else is it?
There is not an embargo on Venezuela. The government still sells oil to the US thru CITGO. There's still (but a lot less than before, mostly of geopolitical reasons) trade with the US. What is happening is that the US government thru the Department of Treasury imposed economic sanctions to several VE government officials accused of money laundering public funds to buy properties and having funds saved in bank accounts up there. And also, there's a restriction for US entities or individuals to buy debt from here. And a court decision to disallow CITGO to be sold until the VE government pays debt.
So it's not an embargo. We still have trade with the US.
The main crisis started at the end of 2015. Oil prices fell sharply, and all subsized services started to crash (colleges, government hospitals, government supermarkets, oil industry, etc), prices of everything started to raise faster. Government imposed heavier price controls and started to put sellers on jail, and cause of that scarcity worsened. Then national food supply was changed with imported food from México (bad quality food, it's recent news), Brasil and Guyana. And it was also price controlled. Well, hyperinflation came. The sanctions were imposed just a year ago after all the killings due to protests against the government.
I'm not naive to not know that all of this is a geopolitical issue. There is a trade war ongoing between China and the US. And to pressure Venezuela for a change affects China interests in this region. They have a high influence in some oil production, with joint ventures with the VE government and also in the mining industry.
I agree that it's not a good idea to base your entire government on oil revenues, but wouldn't the problem stay very similar if you base the government on the tax revenue of oil production? If then the oil price drops, that will lower tax revenue just as much if not more, because only profits are taxed not revenue
I think diversifying earlier would have been good, using the revenue from oil to boost other areas of the economy maybe even with outside investments, not to immediately give out UBI with the oil revenue, and such