Starving in socialist Venezuela? Let's make a deal with the Iranians to feed us!

Say, citizen, have you heard a word about life in Venezuela in the last four months?

Think hard.  For college-age students and Democrats, can you tell us where that country is located?  Can you tell us what system of government it uses?

No?  Well, it's on the north coast of South America, and after being free-market for a century or so, in 1980 or so it elected a socialist president, and the disaster began.

In 1980 Venezuela had the highest per-capita income in all of Latin America.  But in 1992 an army officer, Hugo Chavez, staged a coup d'etat, overthrowing the elected government.  Then six years later Venezuelans--buying the socialist promise of free food and housing for everyone--elected Chavez.as president, in an election marked by...um...charges of fraud.

True to socialist dictates, Chavez seized every business he could, helped by the power to set the max allowable sale prices of items below what it cost businesses to purchase.those goods.  The stated goal of this policy was to keep "greedy rich capitalists" from making big profits, but it doesn't take a college degree to grasp that no business could stay in business very long when the government forced them to sell below cost.  And businesses went under by the thousands.

Inflation topped 10,000 percent per year.  While the government for years kept the official currency exchange rate at the pre-Chavez level of 5 Bolivars per dollar, the real figure reached 100,000 to the dollar.  And only government agencies and politicians could get the far more favorable official rate..

Stores ran out of food.  And toilet paper, and milk.  Lines formed just after midnight for the next day's opening, only to find shelves bare.  Hospitals didn't have the funds to buy the most basic medicines, like antibiotics or disinfectants for walls and operating tables.  The water system in the capital city began to fail due to no maintainance, leaving residents to fill bottles from the city's drainage ditches.

Back then, before the Democrat party became totally socialist, American newspapers ran front-page pics of thousands of citizens down in drainage ditches filling plastic bottles with water.  Really!

But after mid-2017, as if by magic the Lying Mainstream Media stopped printing and broadcasting stories about the socialist disaster in Venezuela.  It's almost like the U.S. Media didn't want people to pay attention to the problems there anymore.  Gosh, with a huge humanitarian disaster, you'd think that would be really newsworthy, but somehow....  Hard to imagine why the media were no longer interested, eh?

But news still trickles out, if you know how to get around the Mainstream Media gatekeepers and their allies at Fakebook, Twatter and Google.  So here's the latest installment:

Venezuela had several grocery chains, all of which died.  They seized one of the largest, and reopened it as a state-run store.  It also died.  So in a brilliant move, they've now sold it to...wait for it...an Iranian businessman connected to the Iranian mullah rulers.

Hey, perfectly legal.  But a couple of quirks emerged that show how even the socialists are being forced to roll back some of their more insane moves:  The store's prices aren't shown in bolivars (which would be 100,000 for a single egg) but in...wait for it...dollars.  And the prices are no longer subsidized (much) by the government, so things cost about the same as U.S. prices.

Unfortunately the minimum wage in Venezuela is now about four dollars per month, so the fact that a liter of cooking oil is available isnt much help, since it costs the equivalent of over two weeks wages for the poor.  A Venezuelan writer, Christian K. Caruzo fills in the story:

The first Iranian supermarket in Venezuela has opened.  The face behind this venture is Issa Rezaei, a man who has ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its missile program.

The regime’s media machine, of course, have trumpeted this as a triumph--a way to get around U.S. economic sanctions.  Except the U.S. hasn't put sanctions on the sale of food or medicine to Venezuela.  Of course most Venezuelans don't know that.

The supermarket is located far from the more impoverished parts of the capital, and you'll soon see why.

Fancy, clean, with high tech dystopian checkpoints for Chinese Coronavirus prevention (which don’t seem to prevent their employees from getting infected), and, most importantly, stocked, it’s almost too good to be true. The products display their price tags not in bolivars, but on the “Great Satan’s” greenbacks, the same U.S. dollars that were once illegal for us to hold and trade – for which we had to use clever wordsmithing, such as “verdes” (greens), “lechugas” (lettuces), and even “Trumps” – that are now keeping whatever is left of our economy afloat. 

$5.92 for a kilo of powdered milk (made by a company that was seized by the regime in 2008), $2.53 for a liter of corn oil.  But in a country where hyperinflatioo has make the minimum wage worth less than $4 per month, the products are out of reach for all but the wealthy (and politicias).

And even here, government rules limit buying to specific days of the week determined by the last number of our ID card..

The building housing this Iranian supermarket is occupying has a picturesque story of its own, tied to the ill-fated exploits of Venezuela’s socialism.

It formerly belonged to the Colombian “Éxito” supermarket chain, and for a time, all was good. In the early days of 2010 (and at the apex of his socialist dream), the now Supreme and Eternal Commander of the Bolivarian Revolution Hugo Chávez seized Éxito’s entire chain and infrastructure to bring forth a Corporation of Socialist Markets (COMERSO), of which “Abastos Bicentenario” went onto occupying most of Éxito’s former locations.

To no one's surprise, it got run to the ground, trashed, obliterated. Shortages, long lines (some even overnight), misery, and all the wondrous experiences of grocery shopping in socialism.  

After Abastos Bicentenario failed, the Maduro regime opened a new business: Tiendas CLAP — part of the government's  emergency food system, in which true believers in the socialist Revolution are rewarded with insect-infested rice, “yellow” milk, and rotten fish flesh.

After that failed, the socialists decided to try some Iranian “capitalism.”

For a regime that expropriated companies, seized land, and persecuted private entrepreneurship in the name of Socialist “food sovereignty” to give it all away to Iran is not just baffling, but a testament to the failure of their misbegotten ideology.

From the highest per-capita income in Latin America to paying three weeks' wages for a liter of cooking oil.  Wow.  Blink of an eye.  And if you think Democrats aren't trying to bring the wonders of socialism to the U.S. you haven't been listening to 'em.

Venezuela Timeline:
1950s Venezuela is the 4th wealthiest nation per capita in the world.
1958 through the 1980s Venezuela had highest per-capita wealth in South America.
1998 Socialist Hugo Chavez elected president
1999 All healthcare totally socialized
1999 By decree, college is now free.
2012 Bernie Sanders praised Venezuela’s “American Dream.”
2012 Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan National Assembly enact the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.”
2014 Opposition leaders were imprisoned.
2016 Venezuelans began eating pets and zoo animals due to widespread food shortages, and healthcare started being rationed.
2017 Constitution and elections suspended.

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