The socialist paradise of Venezuela

The Herald reports:

Chavez died on March 5, 2013, after a long battle with cancer. He chose Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, to be his successor, but the ride since his death has been anything but smooth. Inflation hit 56 per cent last year, there are shortages of basic commodities such as cooking oil and flour and one of the highest murder rates in the world keeps people locked in their homes at night.

Imagine a country where the price of goods and services is 50% higher at the end of the year. And then even worse that you can’t buy basic necessities. And finally you cower inside at night. Welcome to the success of socialism. They even have had shortages of toilet paper!

Venezuela has a huge amount of natural resources. Its problem is that it has one of the weakest property rights regimes in the world and has nationalised and confiscated property. So investment goes away.

As for crime, the crime rate is so bad there, do you know what the Goverment did in response? They no longer publish crime data!!

A person is murdered every 21 minutes and the homicide rate has quadrupled in the last 15 years. More people are killed there than in the Iraq War. In the capital city, the homicide rate is 122 per 100,000. That means that over 1 in 1000 residents are killed every year. Over a 10 year period your chance of being murdered is greater than 1 in 100.