Hugo Chavez’s Socialism: the Little Engine that Couldn’t | NewsReal Blog

Hugo Chavez’s Socialism: the Little Engine that Couldn’t | NewsReal Blog: "One thing socialists are good at is overlooking the deficiencies of the socialist model, wherever that model is put into practice. The world, unfortunately, is full of examples of those failed models. In our own hemisphere, for example, we can study how socialism has failed Cuba, that tropical island-nation run by the autocratic Castro brothers, the co-Presidents-for-life who have managed to turn that country into a living museum where every year is 1950.

Or we can look at another example of a socialist state that has not yet failed, but is failing: Venezuela. Venezuela’s soon-to-be-President-for-life, Hugo Chavez, is the architect of the failing socialist model in that country, which he has comically named “Socialism of the 21st Century.”

Let’s have a look at how things have been going with Chavez’s socialist experiment.

Last week was a busy one for Chavez, for it required him to take some steps to forestall the further contraction of Venezuela’s economy—which shrank 3% last year alone. With inflation now the highest in all of Latin America, Chavez took a play out of the socialist economic handbook (which worked so well for Cuba) and devalued the national currency. What this means is that for the average consumer, the price of many goods (especially imported ones) will double overnight."