By "Peoples welfare" - you mean the welfare of the shareholders in Shell, Total, Enron, Halliburton....

What a great man elected by the people even after the Americans as usual tried to get him kicked out. Fair play to him

I took "people's welfare" to mean the welfare of everyone, not just those who are happy to have every single aspect of their lives dictated to them by a megalomaniacal socialist dictator-in-waiting.

Apparently, the State Oil company can't pay the service companies, so he's solved the problem by bringing them under state control.One problem, the service companies sell know how and high tech equipment, they have no fixed assets in Venezuela so if they don't get paid, they'll leave and if they leave, production will fall.

No his own people. Who are suffering as his ill conceived economic lunacy leaves them broke.

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Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

The price of oil has dropped with the slump. Perhaps we could have done with some more of Chavez type of lunacy, that has kept some natural resources in the hands of the Venezuelan people, and less of our own type, which has left us bankrupt many times over, with our resources given away to multinational corporations.

Another problem with bringing them under state control is that it doesn't solve the first problem at all. All they are now doing is using the country's reserves to pay. The reserves of the nation are now down by over half and falling, a massively unstainable economic plan if ever there was one.

But what's worse here is that since Chavez started his "revolution" his control over people's lives had grown and grown. So much so that everyone in venezuela is dependent on his government for survival, from clothes, income, food, education, everything! His absolutely criminal management of the economy is running though the nation's finances and once there is nothing left there is nothing left. The people left behind will have no means of support whatsoever, having been totally dependent on the government for handouts, and then what happens?

Of course this is in total contrevention to the long held socialist belief that anybody who isn't a rabid leftie doesn't care about people, evidence of this in cactusflower's naive and somewhat insulting comment above.

It's ridiculous, this man being lauded as a hero by illinformed ideology blinded lefties is a criminal of the highest order, he has scant regard for democracy and is creating what will be one of the most damaging crashes in the country's history and nobody is coming to help because he's alienated Venezuela. When it all goes tits up, and it will, I won't be smiling when I say I told you so.

Its fairly standard for Sth. America, Peron did the same in Argentina years ago, of course, its all the Yankee's fault.

Ah yes, being f*cked over with free education, free healthcare, and a chance to rise beyond the barrio gutter. The sheer horror of it....

I'm sure Mugabe promised his supporters all the same would arise from his land acquisition programme A dictator is a dictator, left or right.

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Mass Immigration - Not in my name
Liberal elites across the EU have taken Bertoldt Brechts advice and declared that the people have forfeited the confidence of the government, therefore the liberal elites have decided to dissolve the people and import another.