Dammit are you the guy who always create those Obama = Hitler memes that always litter my facebook feed?
Yep, for the majority it has been a lot better. It is vitally important to learn how to read, have enough to eat and have acccess to basic health care. Things that it was always possibly to have in a country with so much oil. It is true for the 1% life was somewhat less lavish. The small educated middle class may or may not have been somewhat worse off. Well here is another chance for the US backed oligarchs to seize power and decrease the percent of the profits retained by Venezuela and particularly the lower classes. Should be interesting.
Do you think it is important to learn to read, eat and not die of simple diarrhea due to dirty driniking water? I prefer the type of social democratic country you have benefitted from, but have you ever considered my question, seriously?
We saw what the alternative to Chavez was in that nation, and it was far worse. Chavez did a lot of bad things, and tried for authoritarian power grabs. That's wrong. But he greatly helped the masses and poor of that nation. He followed through on his idea that the nation's wealth should be spent on educating the previously uneducated poor in the nation. That's the reason he was elected by the majority of the country time and time again.
Universal healthcare and a better infant mortality rate than the U.S. while having trade choked away by the most influential country in the world? I'd say they've done all they could while giving the middle finger to the U.S.
Poverty went from 54% to 26% in the last 10 years of Chavez. So for a lot of people, yes, that was the choice. In the process, he destroyed a lot of Venezuela's ultimate potential, but that potential wasn't being used to help the majority of it's citizens before anyway - so for that segment of the population, Chavez was a lifeline. Overall, a mixed bag, but I'd guess glynch is reasonably accurate, if a bit over the top, in his claim, especially for that "extreme poverty" segment:
Chavez wasn't all evil, obviously. He did help bring some unity for that country and he did push to help the extreme poor. With that being said, I think his time as leader needed to end. Based on some discussion I had with some middle class workers there, Chavez pandered to the majority, i.e. the poor. Obviously the poverty issue needs to be address, but at a more in depth and comprehensive level, not superficially as they described.
Crappy universal health care is better than no health care at all, which was the alternative for a huge chunk of their population.
Yes, because here in the US with our outstanding health care system, 100% of people who have cancer are cured and no one ever dies.
That's the thing. I would agree that he was not an evil person per se. And may he rest in peace. But basically, it comes down to: Yeah, obviously you will be popular with people you give handouts to. You could also call it buying votes. And if you re-distribute wealth by basically stealing from those who worked hard and not caring that the intellectual elite of the country has to flee the country...yeah, you will gain popularity with the uneducated masses you give part of the stolen funds to (while keeping a share for yourself and your cronies). As a side effect, you may even - in the short term - reduce extreme poverty. But is that sustainable? Not really. If you do not build a functioning economy, you are not doing the poorest a favor either, in the long term. It will just lead to everyone being much poorer, especially if and when oil runs out. What they need is a liberalization of the economy, increased crime fighting measures, better average education, incentives for the intellectual elite to come back to the country and help build up a functioning economy and guarantees that if you work hard, it will not happen again that everything just gets stolen from you. What is also important is that there must be a fair distribution of opportunities down to the poorest. This means good education programs and fair access to higher education and a minimum standard of living for the poorest - not handouts to buy votes. I will concede that historically, governments in Latin America, including Venezuela, have not cared enough about the poorest. But the way in which the global left is trying to make Chavez a big hero is ridiculous. Most of these people are very authoritarian and basically driven by a desire to make sure nobody has more than them. The global left is hostile towards an achievement driven society. They want to be in power to take and give and redistribute wealth according to their ideological leanings - which is what Chavez did and why they liked him so much, when in reality, Venezuela had (and has) so much more potential than Chavez got out of it, with his authoritarian redistribution approach.
