{"id":29674,"date":"2015-01-14T02:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29674"},"modified":"2015-01-13T22:38:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T03:38:27","slug":"this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-the-half-wits-take-charge-of-economic-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/14\/this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-the-half-wits-take-charge-of-economic-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;This is what happens when you let the half-wits take charge of economic policy&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/timworstall\/2015\/01\/11\/the-ghastly-economic-mess-in-venezuela-and-how-to-avoid-it-hint-dont-raise-the-minimum-wage\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Worstall<\/a> on the very sad economic plight of Venezuela:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As times go on the stories about how far and how fast the economy of Venezuela has fallen apart become ever more dramatic. They now actually have the Army, seriously, the armed forces, guarding food supplies. And the police are handing out toilet paper. We can just about imagine such things happening in the wake of some massive natural disaster, the levee breaks, the hurricane comes ashore, but not as day after day activity as something normal for the nation. But there has been no natural disaster in Venezuela, this is just the result of some years of idiot socialism. What makes it all so tragic is that there was and is another way to achieve the stated aim: making the poor better off. And when we consider what we might want to do to make the poor better off we\u2019d better pay attention to this, admittedly extreme, example.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Sure, Venezuela\u2019s an oil exporter, sure the price of oil has fallen. But this isn\u2019t what happens in a commodity producer when the exports fall in price. This is what happens when you let the half-wits take charge of economic policy for a nation. Actually, in Venezuela, calling them half-wits is probably a mite too polite.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s absolutely nothing wrong at all with the intention of making the poor better off. Indeed, I share that aim: that\u2019s why I\u2019m this capitalist free marketeer type, as it\u2019s the only socio-economic system we\u2019ve ever had that has made the poor substantially better off for any period of time. However, there are good ways and bad ways of going about doing this and if we want to succeed in our aim, in the US, of making the poor better off then we\u2019d do well to pay attention.<\/p>\n<p>The short answer is don\u2019t screw with the market.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Worstall on the very sad economic plight of Venezuela: As times go on the stories about how far and how fast the economy of Venezuela has fallen apart become ever more dramatic. They now actually have the Army, seriously, the armed forces, guarding food supplies. And the police are handing out toilet paper. We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,25],"tags":[96,91,76,398],"class_list":["post-29674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-economics","tag-minimumwage","tag-poverty","tag-socialism","tag-venezuela"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7IC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29675,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29674\/revisions\/29675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}