Hugo Chavez has been fighting capitalism in Venezuela since he became president in 1998. From confiscatory taxes on the rich to the nationalization of private companies, Chavez has \u201cfundamentally changed\u201d the nation. Blessed with plentiful natural resources, one would expect Venezuela to be the shining star of South America. Instead, OPEC\u2019s fifth largest oil producer continues to battle serious economic woes.<\/p>\n
Chavez\u2019s latest attack on capitalism includes a series of price caps on household products manufactured by Coca-Cola, P&G, and other evil corporations. His recently enacted Law of Fair Prices and Costs <\/em>reads like something out of Atlas Shrugged<\/em>. Chavez put it this way on Thursday (2\/9\/12): \u201cThey [the corporations] are still going to make money, we\u2019re not asking them to lose money, but the profit has to be rational, they can\u2019t rob the people,\u201d Chavez said on state television. \u201cIf one of these companies says that they can\u2019t comply with this, there\u2019s no problem, I\u2019ll take the company and give it to the workers and we\u2019ll produce at a lower price and still make profit.\u201d<\/p>\n Venezuela\u2019s official inflation rate was 26% in January. Central planners like Chavez typically blame producers for such maladies and institute price controls to reign in profits. But the real problem is the money supply. Chavez\u2019 government has been printing bolivars at a record pace to finance government spending. Prices always<\/em> increase\u2014sooner or later\u2014when the money supply expands too rapidly.<\/p>\n The latest installment in Venezuela\u2019s failed socialist experiment is simply another government attempt to fix the unintended consequences of previous interventions. What is most chilling is that Chavez\u2019s rhetoric is often quite similar to that of our president. Perhaps Obama hasn\u2019t gone so far as to threaten to take a private company from its owners and give it to the workers. But one could argue, however, that this is precisely what he did with GM.<\/p>\n Source: www.businessweek.com\/news\/2012-02-09\/chavez-sets-price-caps-on-p-g-deodorant-coca-cola-water.html<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hugo Chavez has been fighting capitalism in Venezuela since he became president in 1998. From confiscatory taxes on the rich to the nationalization of private companies, Chavez has \u201cfundamentally changed\u201d the nation. Blessed with plentiful natural resources, one would expect Venezuela to be the shining star of South America. Instead, OPEC\u2019s fifth largest oil producer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}