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Total Members Voted: 107

[misko27]

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW HUGO CHAVEZ

Tangentially relevant?

[Reelya]

You know, Venezuelan GDP quadrupled and inflation fell by almost half during the Chavez administration. That's 4 times the GDP (in US dollar terms), along with substantial reductions in income inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient - yet it's still more unequal than the USA, and USA's government spending per GDP is much higher than Venezuela - so who is the communist nation by that criteria? Don't believe the Communist label the US media and latin right-wing press like to throw at him, his election was followed by the biggest expansion of the private economy the country had since the slump and hyperinflation started in 1989. Inflation was 38% when he was elected, and just over 20% when he died. Since the huge GDP growth (in inflation adjusted, US dollar terms), large reduction in inequality, and modest population growth (about 1.5% per year), it's pretty certain that the average Venezuelan is a lot more wealthy than before Chavez. Regardless of the local currency inflation rate - dollar denominated wages have risen much faster.

Data vs propaganda: Data wins every time. e.g. the shortages are more to do with rapidly expanding consumption, than falling production. A very good test-case would be beef consumption:

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ve&commodity=beef-and-veal-meat&graph=domestic-consumption

National beef consumption (which is the primo meat, so a good measure of overall nutrition), increased by over 50% since Chavez was elected. The source for this heretical data? The Uber-commie US Department of Agriculture. So, when the wealthy venezuelans (the upper-middle class who were the only ones previously with such things as doctor access) complain about not being able to buy beef in the shops (i've heard this very complaint from a Venezuelan anti-Chavez guy on chat), it's not because there's less beef - more beef is being sold and eaten than ever before, it's that now, those scummy lower-classes are competing with the wealthy for the supply. and private production can't expand fast enough. All this - and yet they STILL have lower inflation than the previous administration which didn't see any GDP growth for 10 years.

The media would have you believe there's a production crash - but how does rising consumption in recent years fit with than theory at all? Surely domestic consumption should be lower if that was the explanation behind the reported shortages? Chicken is an interesting measure too, being more the poor-mans protein in developing countries:

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ve&commodity=broiler-meat&graph=domestic-consumption

It increased by a factor of almost 2.5 since Chavez was elected - 371,000 metric tons in 1997 (which had remained steady for almost 20 years!) then rising to about 860,000 metric tons per year for the last 5 years; consumption has remain steady since 2009, no sign of this apparent crash in supply the media like to scream histrionically about. Well, there was a bit of a dip during the Global Financial Crisis, but consumption is still lightyears ahead of the pre-Chavez days. Going off that graph, more chicken has clearly been consumed in the Chavez era, than 30-40 years before it, possibly the last century. Apparently this increase in production and consumption - which entirely falls during the Chavez years - is entirely coincidental and "despite" his being in power, just like all the other economic data is hand-waived away that "miraculously" improved after he was elected.

[Sheb]

From what I've heard is a raise in import. Of course, their current account blance is still widely positive thanks to the oil, so that's not too much of a problem.

P.S. Do you have sources for that GDP growth? Quadrupling of GDP in 14 years, that would be sustained growth of ~10%. Last I checked, they managed an healthy 5%.

[Reelya]

Sure, I just use Google Data which is from the world bank:

http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:VEN

In 1998, just prior to Chavez's election GDP was US$91 billion, and in 2010, just before the GFC hit them, it was US$393 billion.

That's quadrupled (in 12 years) without any exaggeration, though it's fallen off a bit since the crash, and they even had a crash DURING those 10 years (which was due to the 2002 coup and widespread sabotage of oil production by the corporate managers in 2002-2003) and still managed to quadruple the previous GDP. If you count it from the low-point of the oil strike, where GDP was $83 billion, it rose by almost a factor of 5 over a seven-year period - which entirely lies in the period where Chavez's policies were managing the state oil corporation - pure coincidence I'm sure.

Here are the year-by-year GDP growth rates:

http://www.indexmundi.com/venezuela/gdp_real_growth_rate.html

They are expanding importation, but it's the high demand, not production problems which are driving imports. Same effect, but a different cause. Runaway consumption doesn't play as well as a "doom and gloom" scenario though, so all corporate media plays it as a domestic crunch, which the higher consumption totally blows away as a theory.

[GreatJustice]

You know, Venezuelan GDP quadrupled and inflation fell by almost half during the Chavez administration. That's 4 times the GDP (in US dollar terms), along with substantial reductions in income inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient - yet it's still more unequal than the USA, and USA's government spending per GDP is much higher than Venezuela - so who is the communist nation by that criteria? Don't believe the Communist label the US media and latin right-wing press like to throw at him, his election was followed by the biggest expansion of the private economy the country had since the slump and hyperinflation started in 1989. Inflation was 38% when he was elected, and just over 20% when he died. Since the huge GDP growth (in inflation adjusted, US dollar terms), large reduction in inequality, and modest population growth (about 1.5% per year), it's pretty certain that the average Venezuelan is a lot more wealthy than before Chavez. Regardless of the local currency inflation rate - dollar denominated wages have risen much faster.

Data vs propaganda: Data wins every time. e.g. the shortages are more to do with rapidly expanding consumption, than falling production. A very good test-case would be beef consumption:

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ve&commodity=beef-and-veal-meat&graph=domestic-consumption

National beef consumption (which is the primo meat, so a good measure of overall nutrition), increased by over 50% since Chavez was elected. The source for this heretical data? The Uber-commie US Department of Agriculture. So, when the wealthy venezuelans (the upper-middle class who were the only ones previously with such things as doctor access) complain about not being able to buy beef in the shops (i've heard this very complaint from a Venezuelan anti-Chavez guy on chat), it's not because there's less beef - more beef is being sold and eaten than ever before, it's that now, those scummy lower-classes are competing with the wealthy for the supply. and private production can't expand fast enough. All this - and yet they STILL have lower inflation than the previous administration which didn't see any GDP growth for 10 years.

The media would have you believe there's a production crash - but how does rising consumption in recent years fit with than theory at all? Surely domestic consumption should be lower if that was the explanation behind the reported shortages? Chicken is an interesting measure too, being more the poor-mans protein in developing countries:

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ve&commodity=broiler-meat&graph=domestic-consumption

It increased by a factor of almost 2.5 since Chavez was elected - 371,000 metric tons in 1997 (which had remained steady for almost 20 years!) then rising to about 860,000 metric tons per year for the last 5 years; consumption has remain steady since 2009, no sign of this apparent crash in supply the media like to scream histrionically about. Well, there was a bit of a dip during the Global Financial Crisis, but consumption is still lightyears ahead of the pre-Chavez days. Going off that graph, more chicken has clearly been consumed in the Chavez era, than 30-40 years before it, possibly the last century. Apparently this increase in production and consumption - which entirely falls during the Chavez years - is entirely coincidental and "despite" his being in power, just like all the other economic data is hand-waived away that "miraculously" improved after he was elected.

We've had this discussion before. Venezuela's fortunes are basically completely tied to the oil industry, and it's had even less success than comparable oil producing countries that basically run on feudalism. Public policy really has nothing to do with it, and if anything has brought a lot of nasty side effects (inflation, waste of produce, etc).

[Reelya]

Just defusing the Chavez-hate, which stems from ignoring all the good data and only focusing on pockets of bad-news out-of-context. For all the talk of how he ruined the economy, the economy has actually gone pretty good since he was elected. At least, better than it was going before.

Then the argument shifts from "ruined the economy" to "well it would have gone super super good with someone else in charge!" which is shifting the goalposts and pure speculation.

The main point of the consumption data is to show that people are eating a lot better now, than the time before the socialists. Regardless of "cause", it disproves the media-frenzy of starvation in the streets as just not backed by any real data. At least, if they're starving now, how much more were they starving in the 1990's, when wages were stagnant, inflation hit peaks of 85% and later 100%, and why didn't the media give a damn now, and it suddenly cares about the people of Venezuela now?

[Nadaka]

Great Justice, its hard to say that it brought high inflation when the inflation over that period of time was almost halved. Inflation is still high, but you can't honestly say that his tenure caused the high inflation.

[Sheb]

GJ, that's not entirely true, the rest of the economy is growing as well.

Anyway, Reelya, your figures aren't adjusted for inflation. There is also the problem that they apparently use the official exchange rate to convert it into $, which is quite ridiculous.

[Reelya]

Ah, you may be right about the default data not being adjusted. It turns to a growth factor of 2.5 over the 7 years then. For comparison, the booming economy of Brazil grew 50% larger in the 2003-2010 time period that Venezuela grew 150% larger, and they didn't suffer any engineered crash in 2003.

The "inflation theory" of growth is actually pretty easy to debunk - years with high GDP growth are the years with low inflation, and vice-versa. If it was just a "trick" with exchange rates, then the "growth" should be highest in the years with the highest inflation. And if you compare GDP growth with nearby countries that the American media claims are doing really well, e.g. Brazil and Colombia, Venezuela performed just as well as they did over the period, debunking that there is any special collapse in Venezuela.

And of course, the "growth is all really inflation" theory doesn't explain the massive growth in chicken and beef consumption during that period, whereas the period before Chavez had massive inflation, and steady or falling consumption.

The World Bank, CIA World Fact Book, and IMF data are all in agreement, and none of those groups are exactly friendly with Venezuela.

[Sheb]

Euh, no, if you click on the small question mark next to the grpah title, it says "not adjusted for inflation". Not disputing high growth, just that particular graph.

[Reelya]

Yep, edited it sorry, i didn't click enough. I think those raw data like how much food people are eating (at least for poorer countries) give a much better "on the ground" measure of how well people are doing than the raw economy numbers. A kilo of beef is always a kilo of beef, no adjustments needed.

[10ebbor10]

A kilo of beef is always a kilo of beef, no adjustments needed.

((Technically, as the kilo is still based on the weight of hexagonal cube made of platina-iridium somewhere in a bunker in Paris. Slight changes have been noted))

[Sheb]

And the price of beef change.

Also, I'm a reader of economically conservative newspapers like the FT or the Economist, and these days they keep blarting about how Medicare will destroy the US budget and we need to cut benefits. However, few words about the huge savings that could be had if the US was pricing its healthcare sanely.

[misko27]

I've decided the gun that fires an Enraged American Eagle would not like Bay12 much.

[Bauglir]

We, however, have never wanted anything more in our lives than such a weapon.