“In short, just about everything the GOP hates.”

No liberty, stagnant economy lacking in opportunity, forced equality for the middle and underclass (but not those connected to the socialist government)… yep, I hate it.

Just like Saddam Hussein. Yes men surrounded him…

No comment necessary.

What are markets and market forces? Are there two classes in Venezuela? The privileged? And then the rest of the poor suckers who have to do anything they can do to survive – like black markets and doing with much LESS.

I’ll keep my standard of living here thank you. I only earn a five-figure income and I have a house with 4,500 square feet and I only owe 2/3rd what it is worth.

To live large in Venezuela you need to say the right things and be with the right people and be privileged.

Utopia is free. And the GOP hates it. 🙂

Teachers teach for free and therefore don’t get paid – so how do they live?
Health care is free and therefore Nurses and doctors and administrators don’t get paid – so how do they live?

The money fall from the sky…

Or Luke can realize the sources of information he is reading needs to change. He is being lied to. The economy is NOT vibrant and growing. The only thing growing is Luke’s delusion..

But what Chavez did not explain, was: Why has he kept gas prices so low? Why has he given it away for ten years (gas is 17.07 cents a gallon at the official rate of exchange and 6.11 cents at the parallel swap rate)? Why give something essentially free to the rich, while there are so many poor people in the country? (The gas subsidy for someone like me is 4 times higher than for the poor)
But maybe he can explain to us why it is that he actually reversed two important policies of the previous Government, when he arrived in power in 1998:
First, he stopped increasing the price of gasoline periodically, so that gas would be sold locally at the FOB price and PDVSA would not lose money. Is he just realizing now that PDVSA loses money when it sells gasoline? This has been happening for his ten years as President. Nothing new there. I could have told him that…I guess nobody told him, or nobody around was capable of doing so. Or was afraid to tell him once he made up his mind.
Second, in 1999, PDVSA canceled the natural gas project for vehicles, eliminating its distribution from gas stations and ending a program that was a key part of the solution to having realistic gasoline prices without a large impact on the poor population of Venezuela. Why was this done? I guess because it was a project conceived by the IVth. Republic and it is better to be a good revolutionary and eliminate it, that to continue a good project from the IVth. (Remember the school lunches and the glass of milk projects? Yeap, Chavez got rid of them) That’s ignorance for you. (BTW, this natural gas project was “revived” last year)

While the whole article is worth reading in its entirely, including what it says about cheap electricity, I will simply direct Neo and her readers to the link.
http://devilsexcrement.com/2009/03/17/chavez-and-gasoline-prices-the-clueless-revolutionary/

Contrary to our PSF’s implication, government construction of housing units was not an invention of Thugo. In a Venezuelan Chamber of Construction publication, El Déficit y la Produccié³n Formal de Viviendas, in a graph on page 10 for housing construction from 1960 to 2004, we see that not only has there been public construction of housing during that period, but for most years since 1960 the government sector constructed more units than the private sector. Thugo became President in 1999.

From page 12 of the same publication, we find out that the housing deficit was 1,220,179 units in 2001. Thugo became President in 1999. In 2009 we find the following.

“The increasingly difficult climate for home builders and the inability of the Chavez government to deliver on promises to build enough apartments and houses have led to a housing deficit now estimated at 2 million units….. Chavez has presented several plans to address the problem, and has often said housing should be controlled by the government. He recently announced a new kind of low- income housing to be financed by oil revenue. Still, private industry built 45,600 units last year, twice as many as the government.”

While the housing deficit increased by nearly 800,000 units in the last 8 years of Thugo’s rule, our PSF friend wants to inform us how great Thugo’s “subsidized housing” is.

From a recent article in El Universal.

“En 10 aé±os el gobierno de Hugo Ché¡vez Fré­as efectué³ 1,5 viviendas por 1.000 habitantes, mientras que en el peré­odo de 1989 a 1998 se generaron 3,33 viviendas por 1.000 habitantes y entre 1979 y 1988, 4,90 viviendas por cada 1.000 habitantes.
In 10 years under the government of Hugo Ché¡vez Fré­as 1.5 housing units per 1000 inhabitants were built. Meanwhile, from 1989-1998 there were 3.33 housing units built per 1000 inhabitants, and for 1979-1988 4.9 housing units built per 1000 inhabitants .” my translation

Under Thugo’s rule, fewer housing units are constructed, the housing deficit has a massive increase during his watch, and our PSF friend wants to inform us how great Thugo’s “subsidized housing” is.

Sounds like he’d be good at running Democratic town halls.