Tuesday, February 27, 2007

How long does it take..

...for a socialist government to torpedo the prosperity of its subjects? Unfortunately, the experiment has been going on in Zimbabwe and Venezuela for the past few years, and the answer is troubling; months.

Just as Lenin caused starvation in the breadbasket of Europe, Mugabe has caused famine in one of Africa's breadbaskets. Even more shocking, Hugo Chavez has managed to empty his country's grocery stores via price controls during the biggest bull market in petroleum in decades.

2 comments:

Mercy Now said...

Do you know why that is happening in Latin America? What I mean is that the people are voting these left wing officials into office. I hear that Mexicans are beginning to move to the same direction as well. Perhaps because the current system hasn't worked for the past 10-20 yrs that people are willing to cast their lot to another however crazy they may sound.

Bike Bubba said...

Not quite sure. Part of it is simple anti-U.S. sentiment, I've been told, and another part of it must be that the socialists are (like here) making big promises that sane economists know they cannot keep.

We went the same way here, didn't we? It goes to figure in a country that has still to learn that FDR extended the Depression--he hardly ended it!

So why should we--who largely have not learned the failure of socialism--be surprised when others follow its siren song to the rocks?