Well, just need to look at statistics before and after Chavez's 12 years. 12 years should be enough of a time-period to determine how well he's done?
Inflation when he was elected ~ 35%, right now 18%. They blame Chavez for high inflation, without giving you the historical; figures.
Poverty before - 54% of the population below the poverty line, now it's about 25%.
Yeah, there are shortages in shops, but that's because demand has skyrocketed due to the previously-starving masses now able to buy stuff. Food production has actually faster than population growth, but consumption has increased even quicker. They just tell you "food shortages" in the news articles, without giving you historical context.
This article below gives some context, plus graphs directly linked from World Bank figures. e.g. from 1986 to 1999, when Chavez was elected, total cereal production actually
declined in Venezuela, but since Chavez's election, it's doubled.
There are other stats, which taken without context can be made to look bad, e.g. the percentage of GDP made up by manufacturing since Chavez's election has fallen from 23% to 14%. That means manufacturing output is lower, right. Wrong! Because total GDP (inflation adjusted, compared to US dollars, etc) grew by 300% during that time period, so the 14% is 14% of something 4 times the size of before, so the manufacturing sector is 2.5 as large as before, or 150% growth in the 12 year period.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7513Here's Mark Weisbrot of the center for economic research in Washington's 10 year report on Venezuela:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/indicators/2009
Among the highlights:
The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflationadjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually.
Most of this growth has been in the nonoil sector of the economy, and the private sector has grown faster than the public sector.
During the current economic expansion, the poverty rate has been cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008. Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent. These poverty rates measure only cash income, and does take into account increased access to health care or education.
Over the entire decade, the percentage of households in poverty has been reduced by 39 percent, and extreme poverty by more than half.
Inequality, as measured by the Gini index, has also fallen substantially. The index has fallen to 41 in 2008, from 48.1 in 2003 and 47 in 1999. This represents a large reduction in inequality.
Real (inflationadjusted) social spending per person more than tripled from 1998-2006.
From 1998-2006, infant mortality has fallen by more than onethird. The number of primary care physicians in the public sector increased 12fold from 1999-2007, providing health care to millions of Venezuelans who previously did not have access.
There have been substantial gains in education, especially higher education, where gross enrollment rates more than doubled from 1999/2000 to 2007/2008.
The labor market also improved substantially over the last decade, with unemployment dropping from 11.3 percent to 7.8 percent. During the current expansion it has fallen by more than half. Other labor market indicators also show substantial gains.
Over the past decade, the number of social security beneficiaries has more than doubled.
Over the decade, the government's total public debt has fallen from 30.7 to 14.3 percent of GDP. The foreign public debt has fallen even more, from 25.6 to 9.8 percent of GDP.
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