Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

I’m going to make this as clear as possible for you and anyone in this thread that might be led astray by the propaganda you are pushing,

The actual sectoral sanctions on Venezuela, not the ones on individuals, that are used to deflect blame away from the failures of the country, began in mid 2017. This was two years after inflation skyrocketed to over 60 percent and their currency became trash. Between 2015 and 2016 the country’s GDP SHRANK by 8%, the unemployment rate was over 17%. The country was already falling apart. So anybody here who sees someone trying to spin those sanctions as some kind of excuse for the collapse of the country please correct them. It is a smokescreen so the conversation will detour into attacking the US and to make it seem as though the country would otherwise not be that bad. For a timeline of sanctions see here.

Now that that is out of the way we can take a look at how the Venezuelan economy collapsed, what primed the country to fall into such a terrible state, and why socialism cannot just be set aside as some unimportant factor.

In the mid 2000s the Chavez regime was riding high on oil, the country has one of the largest accessible oil deposits in the world. With this blessing of resources the country began spending, a lot, primarily targeting anti-poverty programs. This sounds good on paper, poverty is a bad thing. The problem is it isn’t like the country is still staying within its means, plenty of critics at that time were warning that this spending was unsustainable, but it continued. To add on to these problems, price controls were implemented on goods. Socialists will make claims that the majority of business in Venezuela is private, so therefore issues that we have seen are with capitalism. This ignores government meddling with the price of goods.

Gonzalo Asuaje, president of the meat processors association Afrigo, said that costs and demand have surged but in four years the government has barely raised the price of beef, which now stands at $1.82 per pound. Simply getting beef to retailers now costs $2.41 per pound without including any markup, he said.

So the country, before sanctions, is riding on a nationalized oil industry to fund public programs and due to market meddling is experiencing shortages of basic goods. Chavez didn’t stop there though. The country began taking farmland from it’s owners to give to the poor. This was pure redistribution of land, and was a disaster. The land previously was being put to good use, but giving it to the poor, who did not have the experience or support, led to a drastic decrease in food production in the country. Going back to the big spending? The country was using that oil money to try and buy goods to support the country, setting itself up for failure.

Now don’t think those were the only issues, of course you still had blackouts and a lack of running water. I shouldn’t even need to touch on the asinine accusation that “currency speculators” are responsible for the worthless currency. The regime is the one to blame.

So let’s recap real quick. You have a country which has nationalized a number of industries and not kept up maintenance, they have been spending like crazy toward social policies and importing a ton of goods, they have implemented price controls on basic goods setting a price ceiling that is much too low for domestic producers, and they have ruined productive farmland by taking it from the owners and giving to people who don’t know how to farm. Now 2014 comes, the drop in oil prices and the end of the oil parade for the country. Their main source of income just got pulled out from them. The big social programs lose that funding and the country begins printing money like crazy to pay for things (including the debt they have). The country slashes imports, remember the country had been relying on these for consumer goods. Now you have an already meager domestic industry combined with no outside imports of these goods. All the while the country continues into a freefall with inflation skyrocketing.

The current president is an authoritative asshole who is trying to consolidate power, trampling their constitution, and committing crimes against his own people. The US begins issuing sanction on individuals until eventually the US begins sanctioning the country itself in order to do what it can to cut off funds to a corrupt regime that is interested in power and is willing to murder Venezuelans.

Venezuela is a tragedy, it is an example of how good intentions can go wrong, how the best socialist plans can ruin an economy, and how authoritative assholes grab power and hold on to it. Please don’t tell me you have a fuller picture because you read some blog or some Marxist website explaining how the real problem was America or capitalism.