ReasonTV Explains How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and was once the wealthiest country in Latin America.

But today, that’s no longer the case. The nation is in turmoil, with unemployment rampant, inflation in the hundreds of percent annually, the shelves in most stores are empty, infant mortality rates are higher than those in war-torn Syria, and many are literally starving to death.

What’s to blame? Socialism.

To show what a drastic difference the economic system a country operates under has on its economic performance, let’s compare Venezuela against another Latin American nation, Chile. The story of Chile’s success starts in the mid-1970s, when Chile’s military government abandoned socialism and started to implement economic reforms. In 2013, Chile was the world’s 10th freest economy. Chile is Latin America’s economic miracle from the 1970s to today.

Venezuela, in the meantime, declined from being the world’s 10th freest economy in 1975 to being the world’s least free economy in 2013 (data for North Korea is unavailable, but also a contender for the spot).

And what a difference that caused…..

Nearly quadrupling an economy, versus growing an economy at a rate slower than the growth in population (meaning that GDP per person did decline) – which would you rather have?

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