Venezuela's Truly Indictable Offense? President Maduro's Governance

Since Maduro’s ideological blinders won’t allow him to put it on the right track – for starters, he has to end the government’s preposterously massive gasoline subsidy if he wants to get its fiscal house in order – he’s relying on prosecutions of “bourgeois” enemies like Machado to divert the eyesight of what supporters he has left. But perhaps most insulting is Maduro’s recent insistence that even as this tropical Titanic goes under, “we will never cut one bolívar of what we spend” on Venezuela’s poor. As someone who once taught in a Caracas slum, I’m the first to applaud the revolution for steering Venezuela’s oil wealth to the barrios for a change. But Maduro’s claim is patent nonsense, because the revolution’s economic train wreck already has betrayed the poor. Hyperinflation alone is the worst wage cut you can impose on them. More…