I will highlight this as the main point of what I was saying - Venezuela failed to properly address the Dutch disease - and then I will thank you for educating my misunderstanding on the rest of it. I can’t remember the last time I was spanked so hard and enjoyed it.
The (economically) desirable result is one which allocates resources where they need to go. This could (theoretically!) be the case in a social democracy, a dictatorship with a command economy, or even a communist state where there is no such thing as money. It is also all too easy to screw up.
I don’t think the point is that people like free stuff. Society as a whole realizes that it’s good not to have sick elderly people dying in the streets, and we want to continue having that. We realize it’s good to have a healthy, educated workforce, and we want to continue having that. We realize it’s good that our elderly parents or young adult children don’t need to move into our basement to weather that season in their lives, and we want that to continue. We realize that most of us, or someone we care about, will at some point be elderly, or a baby, or a student, or too sick to work, and we’re willing to pay reasonable monthly premiums now to get security later.
That’s what Republicans don’t want people to understand, and that’s why they keep trying to demonize it and hide the ball.
You are assuming those ‘inferior others’ that you are superior to are the ones who will get the help, not you yourself.
Virtually everyone (except the very wealthy) benefit from social security and medicare. Public education. Roads and bridges. Public libraries. A social safety net.
Expanding these programs to include universal health care, more college subsidies and subsidized daycare is just expanding an existing wealth redistribution program designed to make society safer and more humane.
And the trendline seems (to me) to be one directional. As a society becomes wealthier and more advanced, they generally prefer more and more forms of social democracy. Nations adopt things like universal education, pensions for the elderly, UHC as they get wealthier, they generally don’t abandon it.
Venezuela has become poorer and less-advanced in recent years, and still seems to prefer “more and more forms of social democracy” / “free money”. I’m not sure wealth or advancement have much to do with it. People like free stuff.
Yeah, I mean it is not very sustainable. Once the few animals are gone, they’re gone. Of course, when an elephant is that good…
Dennis
Virtually every nation with a per capita GDP above $15,000 has universal health care (except the US).
Its the same with education, after a certain level of wealth (around 5-10k) society invests in universal education. Pollution cleanup becomes a priority around $6000 per capita. So does democracy.
There is a reason virtually every rich country is a social democracy. Even the wealthy dictatorships have programs like universal healthcare and universal education.
You missed the austerity efforts in Europe earlier this decade then. There were significant cuts made to social safety net programs in many European nations in an attempt to get budget deficits and national debt under control. Attempting to increase revenues also saw some raising value added taxes that are effectively regressive taxes. I don’t know off hand if any of them balanced that out with enough progressive income tax rate changes sufficient to not make the overall tax system less progressive.
Of course, Venezuela’s model wasn’t anything like Europe.
No I agree, and the same thing could happen in the US with certain public pension plans, things were overpromised.
But the trendline is the same, as a nation gets wealthier they move towards social democracy in general.
Guiado is trying to lead a coup this morning:
Of the dozen or so Venezuelans I know who have fled their country and now live in L.A., they all make one interesting observation: For them, Trump is Maduro all over again–in an only slightly altered form.
There’s a report out (apparently from an interview with Secretary Pompeo) that Maduro was ready to leave this morning, but Russia convinced him to stay.
Now AFAIK Guiado / his allies have taken over La Carlota and there have been some clashes with Maduro supporters. It seems like the whole “Operation Libertad” thing is fizzling. If Guiado is alive and not under arrest at the end of the week, he should call that a victory.