4 ms·

I currently live in Venezuela and I'm lucky enough to work both with my own local business and with income in foreign currency. People like me are having a fiel

by aclsid 10y ago

I currently live in Venezuela and I'm lucky enough to work both with my own local business and with income in foreign currency. People like me are having a field day here, mostly because inflation does not affect you directly when you just keep rising the price of your goods/services. And as for the foreign currency you earn, it means that very quickly I was able to purchase a car and a house and pay off debt in a way that not even in my wildest dreams I would have done it. The govt is definitely destroying the economy, but just like in war economies, some people would benefit while a lot more will suffer. In here, the people suffering are people that depend on a wage. I have stopped complaining about it because there is no real political leadership anywhere willing to do what is necessary to fix it, so the party will keep going on until they cannot pay their international obligations and the whole thing will start falling under its own weight.

mafribe 10y ago
How long do you think it will take before "the whole thing" collapses? And what will come after the collapse?
- aclsid 10y ago
  The problem is that there won't be any collapse per se. Maybe a default on government paying its international debt or something. What is slowly happening here is that this is morphing into another Cuba, where you will see the vast majority of the population earning these miserable wages, but they survive because of government subsidized food and services. The worst part is that here the supply of such food is highly irregular so you see massive lines when people find out corn flour or whatever other product arrives at a store. But of course, if you have the means, you just buy whatever you want at market prices in certain stores and just avoid the whole thing. Prices that people living with a wage cannot afford. So the real tragedy is this boiling frog effect. In 1989, there were massive riots because fuel prices increased, but now people are losing the will to fight for their rights, helped by lack of clear planning and leadership on the opposition. So I would say most people are just thinking of migrating somewhere else, Argentina and Chile especially, and frankly, I cannot blame them.

by aclsid 10y ago

mafribe 10y ago

How long do you think it will take before "the whole thing" collapses? And what will come after the collapse?

aclsid 10y ago
The problem is that there won't be any collapse per se. Maybe a default on government paying its international debt or something. What is slowly happening here is that this is morphing into another Cuba, where you will see the vast majority of the population earning these miserable wages, but they survive because of government subsidized food and services. The worst part is that here the supply of such food is highly irregular so you see massive lines when people find out corn flour or whatever other product arrives at a store. But of course, if you have the means, you just buy whatever you want at market prices in certain stores and just avoid the whole thing. Prices that people living with a wage cannot afford. So the real tragedy is this boiling frog effect. In 1989, there were massive riots because fuel prices increased, but now people are losing the will to fight for their rights, helped by lack of clear planning and leadership on the opposition. So I would say most people are just thinking of migrating somewhere else, Argentina and Chile especially, and frankly, I cannot blame them.