Bolivarian socialism is murder. Literally.

[rockofcashel]

By pillaging the country's economy. Yeah, great way to set Venezuelans up for the future, once the whole thing comes crashing down they will, having become reliant on government handouts for everything, be left with literally nothing. Way to go Chavez.

You don't have to go all the way to Venezuala to witness the rise in murder rates of a country which has its economy pillaged

Dublin murder rate is one of Europe's highest - City News, National News - Herald.ie

[bayern]

It's bad by European standards, but that's simply not true.

I beg to differ, was in Santiago de Chile when travelling in South America, and there are huge disparities of wealth even by south american standards. Chile was used as an experiment by a bunch of radical free market economists of the Milton Freidman school during the Pinochet era. There are literally luxury gated estates you would see in Miami ten minutes away from shanty towns. But having said that Chile is full of natural resources like copper and experienced a boom when copper prices were high.

[Nugget]

You don't have to go all the way to Venezuala to witness the rise in murder rates of a country which has its economy pillaged

Dublin murder rate is one of Europe's highest - City News, National News - Herald.ie

Did we become more socialist recently or something?

[Nugget]

I beg to differ, was in Santiago de Chile when travelling in South America, and there are huge disparities of wealth even by south american standards. Chile was used as an experiment by a bunch of radical free market economists of the Milton Freidman school during the Pinochet era. There are literally luxury gated estates you would see in Miami ten minutes away from shanty towns. But having said that Chile is full of natural resources like copper and experienced a boom when copper prices were high.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Lus1W_H1k"]YouTube- War on democracy - Chile[/ame]

[CookieMonster]

Oh sorry , I assumed it was from the selling of oil and gas on the world markets and then using the profits to fund social programmes like free education and free health for the poor who previously had no access to such luxuries.lnkmIts a policy to be admired not to be criticised from the ususal neo liberal nuts.

Except Chavez is actively destroying the oil industry in Venezuela as well. He's recently "nationalised" a whole load of oil services companies too, in the "public interest". That interest being that PDVSA owed them billions of dollars and had refused to continue working for PDVSA until they were paid. Chavez has non socialised them and will surely do as he has does with PDVSA, politicise it and turn it into an inefficient adult daycare centre.

He's already plundeded the country's cash reserves and has taken to devaluing the bolivar with gay abandon. Yup, that's an excellent way to empower the poor and make their lives better. Go Chavez.

[Tombo]

Homicides in Venezuela have quadrupled during President Hugo Chavez's 11 years in power, with two people murdered every hour, according to new figures from a non-governmental organization. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), whose data is widely followed in the absence of official statistics, said the South American nation has one of the highest crime rates on the continent, with 54 homicides per 100,000 citizens in 2009.

When Chavez came to power in 1999 there were 4,550 homicides whereas in 2009 there were 16,047, the OVV said.

Reuters AlertNet - Venezuela murder-rate quadrupled under Chavez -NGO

As usual he is blaming rich people and accusing his opposition (they still have that there?) of exaggerating the scale of the issue.

But I am sure their passing is more equitable in a caring, sharing sort of way.

[Panopticon]

Oh sorry , I assumed it was from the selling of oil and gas on the world markets and then using the profits to fund social programmes like free education and free health for the poor who previously had no access to such luxuries.lnkmIts a policy to be admired not to be criticised from the ususal neo liberal nuts.

Well that would explain why Venezuela doesn't have double-digit inflation rates. Oh wait.

And Chile today is still one of the most unequal societies in Latin America.

Absolute untruth. Latin America is a bad place with lots of inequality; it didn't happen overnight in one country alone just because an American economist once gave a lecture to a university there.

[JSLeFanu]

And Chile today is still one of the most unequal societies in Latin America.
True Hugo Chavez has not wiped out poverty in VZA since he became
president a decade ago,but he has done a lot to help the poor and combat the inequality which has been festering in VZA for many decades,long before he became president of VZA.

There's a measure for this GINI

Actually Venezuela score better for equality than Chile, but not by a huge margin which taking Chavez's lengthy term at the helm doesn't reflect brilliantly on him:

gini index venezuela chile - Wolfram|Alpha

What is interesting is that Chile, which has nothing like near the natural resources of Venezuela is almost identical in terms of GDP Per Capita. That does not augur well for Venezuela:

gdp per capita venezuela chile - Wolfram|Alpha

Chavez despite making huge boasts about his literacy programs lags behind Chile

literacy venezuela chile - Wolfram|Alpha


In terms of life expectancy Chile is substantially better:

life expectancy venezuela chile - Wolfram|Alpha

Really, taking into account Venezuela's massive wealth generating engine in the form of oil it has to be said, and ten years is a fair period to call this, that Chavez's performance is pretty bad.

[Ecoguy]

Yawn - another "Lets dig up some BS on Venezuela cos they don't follow the Anglo-American corporate model" thread.

Compared to some of Americas "friends" like Pakistan, Columbia, Saudi,Uzbekistan, Turkey, Azerbijan, Kazakstan, Angola, Nigeria, Indonesia, Israel etc. Chavez and his country is a paradigm of virtue!!

[CookieMonster]

Yawn - another "Lets dig up some BS on Venezuela cos they don't follow the Anglo-American corporate model" thread.

Compared to some of Americas "friends" like Pakistan, Columbia, Saudi,Uzbekistan, Turkey, Azerbijan, Kazakstan, Angola, Nigeria, Indonesia, Israel etc. Chavez and his country is a paradigm of virtue!!

That's a rather lame deflection of the thread's topic. If you want to talk about other countries you are free to start threads for discussion about them. This one is about the fact that murder rates in Venezuela have quadrupled since Chavez came to power.