Venezuelans scramble for food amid oil opulence

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0642296020071112

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan construction worker Gustavo Arteaga has no trouble finding jobs in this OPEC nation's booming economy, but on a recent Monday morning he skipped work as part of a more complicated search -- for milk.

The 37-year-old father-of-two has for months scrambled to find basic products like cooking oil, beef and milk, despite leftist President Hugo Chavez's social program that promises to provide low-cost groceries to the majority poor.

"It takes a miracle to find milk," said Arteaga, who spent two hours in line outside a store in the poor Caracas neighborhood of Eucaliptus. "Don't you see I'm here slaving away to see if I can get even one or two of those (containers)?"

Venezuelan consumers are increasingly facing periodic shortages of basic food products as the economy shows signs of overheating amid record revenues from an oil boom.

The shortages have increased skepticism of Chavez's economic policies and provided a political backdrop to campaigning this month for a referendum on a new constitution that he says is needed to make Venezuela a socialist state.

company, right?

Some of the oil revenues are going to subsidies for the poor while they attend school. It is a program to keep kids in school, and also adult education and job training for their parents and others.

So the poor are buying more food. That's one cause of the shortages, according to this article. Supply is not keeping up with increased demand.

Imagine the poor having full stomachs and going to school. It's a better use of the funds than more yachts and private jets for oil profiteers.

Although the headline and lead are typical Chavez "hit piece" style, the article eventually gets around to a number of interesting points, including hording by the food chains. But it leaves out a rather important point, and that is Venezuela's struggle for food self-sufficiency. Venezuela is way behind in being able to feed itself--it depends on a lot of imports--due to past (rightwing) land policy. Rich, often absentee, landowners own huge swaths of ag land that maybe once was used for cattle grazing and now lies fallow. A few rich people gobbling up land forced many small peasant farmers out--who end up in urban shantytowns looking for work, and whose skills are then lost. (Children don't learn farming.) The Chavez government is buying up some ag land where clear title exists, and taking some land with unclear title--or long disuse and long uninhabited--and providing various programs to keep small farmers on the land or to entice them back to the land. But, due to the corruption, neglect, lack of planning and indifference of prior governments, they've got a big problem that cannot be solved overnight. First, you have to get more land under production, then you have to create distribution networks.

Consider this problem--lack of food self-sufficiency--in combination with increased demand (due to increased income overall, and government educational subsidies), and you've got a shortage problem, right there. The Chavez government also has the problem of feeding the poorest of the poor--people who are sick, unemployable, really struggling. Previous governments didn't give a fuck about them. The Chavez government doesn't see any alternative but to just feed them. It's the humanitarian thing to so. Food giveaways. The private food business resents this. And it's not just big, heartless food chains, but also tiny private food businesses that sell to the poor. But also, because of the communal councils, the result is sometimes creative--say, all the very poor old ladies in the neighborhood banding together to socialize while they cook lunch for work crews. The old ladies find usefulness, can utilize their skills, their lives improve through socializing, and work crews get hot meals (and motherly wisdom).

I think the government will be involved in price controls, and other social engineering of the food chain, for a long time. Venezuela's poor population--above the dirt poor level, which just need to be given food, or they'll starve--is large and needy, and will remain so for a while. A poor mother living in a shack with a couple of kids to feed, clothe and nurture, needs time--years--to become educated and trained, and enter the formal work force. Same with a lot of poor people. They get a subsidy but it's not a lot of money. And if food is too expensive for them, it hampers the whole program--the goal of bootstrapping. So they need price-controlled food. Eventually, what the Chavez government has in mind, is that there will be no or few people in Venezuela who are that poor. That's the socialist part of their plan--to even things out, give more people a chance. And the economic indicators so far support that hope. I think they've had 10% growth, with the PRIVATE sector showing the most growth. When they have harnessed the creative and productive energies of their vast poor population, new businesses, new products, new ideas, new investment, and all the components of prosperity, will increase, as they are already starting to do.

The snags are oil as the basis for wealth and progress. And food production--a long term project. And, of course, outside interference (U.S. supported coups). The oil business is colossally polluting--it is one of the chief planet-killers. And it's going to run out some day. But I have to say, the Chavez government is guiding an oil riches economy in the best way possible. The Arabs have done it in the worst way possible--creating fatcat sultans who lord it over the poor. The U.S. is not much better. Norway has done it well--with a lot of social investment--but they never did have the problems Venezuela has. Raise the level of education; raise the level of skills; provide loans and grants to small businesses (who, in the U.S., are the principle employers), to worker coops and other creative arrangements. Tax fairly but not too much, so capital is available. Leave a lot of room for the people to experiment. Encourage a lot of grass roots citizen participation. Pour money into infrastructure--schools, medical centers, roads, bridges. And work hard on trade and cooperation with neighbor countries.

Our war profiteering corporate news monopolies sourly dwell on negative stores about the Bolivarian Revolution. They are desperate to convince you that socialism doesn't work. Because they are brigands and thieves and warmongers. They live in a "dog eat dog" world. Socialism is the only truly civilized system--and if there are problems, they can be solved, not by unleashing the dogs of "free trade" (global corporate predation), but through cooperation, creativity, compassion and systems of mutual benefit. I mean, look at what unfettered capitalism has done to our planet, and look at the homeless it has dumped onto our own streets--a third of them veterans. It is outrageous. And it has ceased creating jobs here, because it hates worker protections and unions, and it wants no responsibility for society's costs. It is UNCIVILIZED. All profit to the rich. The workers, who create that profit, are so much chattel to them. There has to be a better way, for humans and for the earth. And if there isn't--if experiments to find a better way fail--then maybe that's the end of us. We are not a viable sentient species.

Profit-driven news monopolies will never tell you this--give you the bigger picture. It's not that they shouldn't report a negative story. It's that they don't report anything else, and anything that helps the poor, or that has a higher goal than profit for the rich, gets a negative spin. Educational stipends for the poor create food shortages and long lines. And the alternative is? Fuck education? That's what the rich elite did before Chavez.

And I expect things to get much "worse" in Venezuela for the next three weeks.

Hugo says Venezuela is a socialist paradise, I'll take his word over some lying bourgeois tool of the Americans they "interviewed" for this story.

edit to add:
If there is any man in the world who can and has a right to say what he wants about the bush crew it is Hugo, he knows first hand what they are

And anything he has ever said HAS to be true just because he says Venezuela is a socialist paradise? Huh? Have you been there? Have you ever met him, spoken to him personally? Thats DANGEROUS to take everything anyone says as absolute truth without also examining other options. That's called "reason."

Do you have a link?

I guess sarcasm is harder than I thought to detect over the internet.

setting Venezuelan oil export policy. That was sarcasm.

We get alot of anti-Chavez propaganda in our big media here in the states.

:shrug:

Did nobody watch 20/20 Friday, or Extreme Makeover tonight??? I've never seen poverty like that in Camden NJ.

The options aren't merely limited to either US wants Chavez gone to gain a malleable puppet (though they do), and so kicks him at every opportunity, or that Chavez is a great leader putting his people first. It's entirely possible they're both corrupt. Do you really trust a leader that has images of himself plastered everywhere and shuts down opposing opinions? I sure as hell don't. Just because he hates Bush, doesn't make him a proponent of freedom.

check from the oil profits and let them use the money to improve their lives in any way they see fit..

i see it in ap stories even more often.

need I say anymore? because I could.

Basically you say to the retailers, you cannot sell milk for more than, for example, $1.00. The retailers say, "If I sell the milk for $1.00 I either don't make money or I actually lose money." So the retailer chooses to do one of two things. A: They just don't stock a lot of milk because it's not a money maker or B: they only put a limited amount of milk out to create shortages to later justify raising the price back so they can make a profit. What ends up happening is eventually the government takes control of the milk, which repeats itself with other products until almost everything is state controlled and you're waiting in line for an hour for toilet paper.

I'd say "Chav" but that doesn't quite qualify...

That means things are being snapped up faster than they can be put on the shelves. People have money there..The country is not used to that and has not bulked up yet. It will come..Companies will realize they need to produce way more product now that people have purchasing power..

Are conservatives scared? You betcha!

Betcha.

He'll get his ass shot if he's not careful!

for their political beliefs in Venezuela. Because you keep making this charge and if it is true, I'd like to have the details. Thanks.