by Dan Mitchell | Sep 6, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Was my three-part series (here, here, and here) on Venezuelan socialism unfair? I focused on boring and technical data regarding living standards. At first glance, those numbers make Venezuela look bad. But maybe per-capita GDP dropped because rich people...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 1, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
I sometimes make the theoretical case against socialism. Usually, this means exposing the flaws of the core components of the socialist ideology. Government ownership of the means of production is a recipe for resource misallocation. Central planning has a...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 26, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Socialism
When I write about South America, it’s almost always to cite developments in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela. That’s because those countries clearly show, respectively, the consequences of good, bad, and terrible economic policies.* Today, though,...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 14, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’ve repeatedly praised Chile’s pro-market reforms (see here, here, and here) and I’ve repeatedly condemned Venezuela’s shift to socialism (see here, here, and here). But if you don’t have time to read all those columns, this chart from...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 30, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
What’s the most unfortunate country in the world? North Korea? Zimbabwe? Cuba? Those are three good answers, but another option is Venezuela. Just a few decades ago, it was the richest nation in Latin America and life seemed very nice. But then the...
