Though every eye in the country is focused on the election, Americans should take a moment to look at the socialist disaster unfolding in Venezuela. Domestic economic anxiety is legitimate, but we should be thankful we're so much better off than those subjected to the economic nostrums of the far Left.

Americans are fortunate they no longer have to worry about diphtheria; Venezuelan doctors warn that their country may be on the verge of an epidemic because vaccines and antibiotics are so scarce.

Americans are fortunate that prices are fairly stable; Venezuela has the highest inflation rate in the world, expected to hit 700 percent this year.

Americans can walk into a store when they like and find stocked shelves. In Venezuela, thanks to government price fixing and therefore insufficient supply, you have to stand in line to buy a single bag of corn flour, and there is no guarantee of success even then.

Food delivery trucks are attacked by starving citizens, and stores conduct business through cracks in security gates. Trucks need armed escorts and store-owners fear they will face chaos and looting if they actually open their doors.

President Nicolas Maduro probably knows his reign will soon end. A recent survey by Venebarometro found that 71 percent of Venezuelans want him gone "as soon as possible," and the opposition is trying to overcome his resistance to a recall vote.

Rather than accept responsibility for Venezuela's sad state, Maduro blames anyone else he can think of, including President Obama. He has lashed out at "fascist" opponents, American imperialists, capitalists and illegal Colombian immigrants. He needs to look in the mirror and assign blame where it belongs.

Instead of diversifying the economy, Maduro has relied on the state-owned oil company and its exports to prop up the economy. But the worldwide drop in oil prices has exacerbated Venezuela's economic problems and hastened its decline. The country's GDP per capita declined three years in a row from 2013-15 and seems likely to decline again in 2016.

Rather than asking factory owners what reforms would bring workers back to idled factories, the regime threatens to seize factories and arrest the owners. Venezuela comes dead last in the Fraser Institute's list of 159 countries ranked by economic freedom.

The clear lesson for Americans is that economies work better without government meddling. Governments cannot respond to the needs of citizens as well as markets, for markets are made up of individual people making millions of decisions that better their lives.

Venezuela's food shortages, Cuba's and North Korea's poverty, and the Soviet Union's collapse all show that any government will fail at planning economic decisions that should be left to individuals acting freely.

America's economic freedom made it great. At times, voters have been tempted by shallow government solutions for economic ills. But the great engine of prosperity has always been entrepreneurship and markets.

It is precisely when times get tough that a nation must open its economy rather than clamp down and find scapegoats in foreigners or the wealthy.

As Margaret Thatcher famously said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." In Venezuela, that time has come.