Blog Post

AEIdeas

Just in time perhaps for Milton Friedman’s birthday tomorrow, Sen. Bernie Sanders is promoting on his Facebook page a 2009 hit piece he did on Milton Friedman, which has just been recycled on the In These Times website (“The False Prophet“). According to In These Times, “In this selection, originally published in 2009, Bernie Sanders writes about the intellectual failures, and simultaneous political success, of the ‘Chicago School’s’ greatest avatar, Milton Friedman.”

It’s pretty hard to take Sen. Sanders seriously when he writes about Friedman’s alleged intellectual failures and the alleged failures of capitalism when the socialist-preaching Senator from Vermont has been completely silent on the demonstrated and proven failures of left-wing socialism in Venezuela. To help the good Senator out, I’ve taken the liberty of revising some of his text (and his title) to suggest how he could break his silence on the economic chaos (apocalypse) taking place just 1,400 miles south of Miami in our southern neighbor Venezuela that can be traced directly to the failed ideology of the false prophet of socialism – Hugo Chavez.

New Title: “The Failed Prophet — Hugo Chavez”

Revised Text:

With all due respect to the late Milton Friedman Hugo Chavez, his economic program is nothing more than a wish list for the greediest, the most monied and politically-connected inter­ests in our society. At the same time that this ideology is supported by the rich and powerful— except especially when they’re lining up in Washington Caracas for their welfare checks government handouts and luxury Swiss watches—this same ideology is almost unanimously opposed by working families and middle-class people across this country. Those middle-class Venezuelans are now starving, suffering, and dying as the economy collapses under Chavez-style socialism.

But the issue here is not just economic policy. It goes deeper than that. It touches on the core of who we are as a society and as a people. Are we as human beings supposed to turn around and not see the suffering that so many of our brothers and sisters are experiencing under socialism in Venezuela? Are we content to be living in support a socialist nation where, thanks in part to the Friedmanite Chavezite ideology, the richest 1 percent of Venezuelans own more than the bottom 90 percent and the top one-tenth percent owns more than the bottom 50 percent?

Now we have a case study for what happens when the ideology of Milton Friedman Hugo Chavez becomes the operating ideology of the a socialist government. Under Bush Chavez and Maduro, the median family income has declined by thousands of dollars. Millions of Americans have entered the ranks of the poor. Some 7 million have lost their health insurance. Some 3 million have lost their pensions. And the gap between the very rich and everybody else has grown much wider. Venezuela is running out of food, and there are chronic food shortages and endless, long lines when food is available. Hospitals are overcrowded with sick children while doctors don’t have enough medicine or X-ray machines. Electricity is only available intermittently. Venezuelans are dying for lack of medicine, and homicide rates are soaring as the social fabric collapses and people become increasingly desperate and lawless.

Nearly 800 women died during and shortly after childbirth last year, a 76% increase from 2015. Nearly 11,500 infants died in 2016, a 30% rise from the prior year. Malaria cases jumped to 240,000, a 76% rise from 2015. About the only thing socialist Venezuela has in abundance is economic chaos and political corruption.

Our country Venezuela is due for a transformation. We have It has endured years of right-wing left-wing, socialist ideology, and we are eager to see our South American neighbor move in a different direction. I believe that we will see a major reordering of social and economic priorities and that this last if there is a general election represented a repudiation of right-wing economic arguments that allows the citizens of Venezuela to repudiate the left-wing socialism of Chavez and Maduro.

In the Bush Chavez era, the top 400 families in this country saw their wealth increase by $670 billion his family acquired 17 country estates, totaling more than 100,000 acres, in addition to liquid assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts.

Yet we have Venezuela has children in this country who have no health care or medicine, children and adults who are undernourished from chronic food shortages (the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds last year), and children and adults who sleep out on the streets. Venezuelans of all ages are starving and dying daily. From an economic perspective, from a moral perspective, and from a philosophical perspective, the ideology of Milton Friedman Hugo Chavez’s socialism is dead wrong. With a special emphasis on the word “dead” when it comes to Venezuela’s situation today under the collapse of socialism – people are dying daily.