"Venezuela is now the world champion of inflation, homicide, insecurity, and shortages of essential goods—from milk for children to insulin for diabetics and all kinds of indispensable products. All this despite having the greatest oil reserves in the world and a government with absolute control of all state institutions and levers of power."
photo: businessinsider.com
Economist Dr. Anne Bradley explains why "desperate economic conditions [are] plunging Venezuelans into poverty and despair" in this article, "The Lesson from Venezuela: Making Free Is No Substitute for Unleashing Human Creativity With Powerful Market Signals."She says that "Eliminating prices and making things free or nearly free is the fastest road to poverty and ruin . ." Inflation this year is expected to hit 720%. "This hurts everyone, but it hurts the poor especially because they don’t have the extra income to withstand the loss of currency value and the loss of freedom resulting from inflation."
"This causes extremely high, prohibitive cost increases for basic items. You could go to bed with a loaf of bread costing $2 and wake up with it costing $100." There's a cost to getting stuff for free. It's not really free.
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