I’ve written critical columns about the failure of Venezuelan socialism and I’ve written laudatory columns about the success of Chile’s free markets reforms. Today, let’s compare and contrast what has happened to these two countries. Here are two maps of South America showing per-capita economic output. Amazingly, Venezuela was more than twice as rich as Chile in 1980 but now Chile is more than three times as rich as Venezuela. At this point, I normally would pontificate about the meaning of these two maps. But there’s no need for me to write anything because the person who shared them on Twi ..read more

In Part I of this series, I documented the dramatic decline in living standards ever since socialists took power in Venezuela. In Part II, I compared Venezuela’s decline to the other Latin American nations, particularly the success story of Chile. Initially, I planned on this being a two-part series. After all, what else needs to be said when a nation does so poorly that even other socialists try (and fail) to disavow its policies. But I decided to add Part III because of a remarkable report in the New York Times. Authored by Isayen Herrera and Frances Robles, it actually acknowledge ..read more

Back in 2011, I shared a chart comparing economic growth in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela between 1980 and 2008. My simple goal was to show that market-oriented nations enjoy very fast growth compared to nations with “mixed economies  or socialist economies. Over the past dozen years, I’ve repeatedly shared that chart and featured it in the “anti-convergence club.” Having written yesterday about the ongoing economic misery of Venezuela, it dawned on me that is it probably time to update the numbers. So I went to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook database. What did ..read more

Socialism is an immoral system that has a horrible track record of misery and failure. One of the most tragic examples is Venezuela. It used to be the richest nation in Latin America. But per-capita GDP has collapsed according to IMF data. As you can see from the chart, there were a couple of decent periods, peaking in 2008 and again about five years later. But those were driven by world oil prices. The overall trend during the Chavez-Maduro years has been negative. Socialism has been such a disaster that the country is now largely incapable of benefiting when oil prices rise. By the way, if ..read more

I’ve written many columns about the migration from high-tax states to low-tax states. The obvious takeaway is that people want to move to places where they can keep more of their money. And if they don’t have money, they want to move to places where lower tax burdens create more economic opportunity. The same principle is true when considering international migration. Nations with lower tax burden attract more investors, entrepreneurs, and job creators. And they also attract the people who want the new jobs that are created. We’re seeing an example of this in the Western Hemisphere. Charles La ..read more

Thanks to socialism, Venezuela is a basket case. This video from John Stossel asks if the United States can and should learn from this bad example. The easy answer is yes. Indeed, you can click here and here to get 56 examples of why we should not copy Venezuela’s descent to statism. The main thing to understand is that the world is an economic laboratory and the various countries are experiments showing what works and what doesn’t work. Nations such as Venezuela clearly are wretched examples of what happens if there is a large amount of bad policy. Other nations, by contrast, are examples of ..read more

Two days ago, I shared the most morally reprehensible tweet of the year. Today, we’re going to share a tweet that also is painful to read, but in this case only our friends on the left will be discomforted. I’ve opined about Chile’s success and Venezuela’s failure on multiple occasions, but here’s the great José Piñera with an especially powerful comparison of the two nations. This extraordinary graph is eloquent: the Chilean Model defeats poverty with liberty while the Venezuelan Model creates poverty with socialism. If the free market candidate @joseantoniokast is elected President this ye ..read more

Time to update our series on “great moments in foreign government.” We’ll start with Jersey. I wrote a few years ago about the (relatively) good tax laws in that British dependent territory off the coast of France. But there are two ways those laws could be improved. First, officials could abolish its income tax because a zero income tax is better than a flat tax. And with tax policy heading in the wrong direction in the United Kingdom, that would further enhance Jersey’s competitive advantage. Sadly, the island’s lawmakers haven’t opted for that choice. But they did approve a second reform. A ..read more

When I share examples of socialism humor and communism humor, I sometimes wonder whether we should laugh about ideologies that have imposed so much death and misery on the world. For instance, I’ve shared some jokes about the horrid consequences of Venezuelan socialism. Including jokes dealing with widespread hunger. But now I feel a bit guilty. Not because I’ve been mocking communism and socialism. Both are evil and deserve endless scorn. Instead, I feel a bit guilty because I’ve actually encountered real victims of Venezuelan statism. I’m currently in Medellin, Colombia, where I’ll be speaki ..read more

The economic disintegration of Venezuela is a powerful example how socialism fails. Even in a nation with massive oil wealth. This video from Reason tells the tragic story. I think long-run data is especially valuable when assessing a nation’s economic performance. And Venezuela definitely looks terrible when looking at decades of data on per-capita economic output. Especially when compared to a pro-market nations such as Chile. Not that we should be surprised. This is what we find anytime capitalist-oriented counties are compared with statism-oriented countries. South Korea vs. North Korea ..read more