World Misery Index is In... Venezuela Wins in a Landslide

Well of you go by suicide rates, Japan and South Korea are in the top 10

 

That's very possible - but we're using their government reporting on inflation rates and GDP as it stands. From last June:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/poverty-shoots-up-in-venezuela/


When the Venezuelan government defends itself from its critics, it usually points to declining poverty rates as proof of its success. For a while, this worked; poverty figures indeed improved during a portion of the chavista years. But the days when poverty was a winning issue for chavismo are over. Official statistics now show that poverty is rising rapidly.

Venezuela’s official statistics office (INE) mostly spends its time producing reports charged with political language — but it still manages to report actual data once in a while. A few weeks ago, the statisticians published proof that one in three Venezuelans are poor, when twelve months ago the figure stood at one in four. Since an important part of the argument against the opposition is the government’s claim that they, and only they, ensure decreasing poverty, this is a significant development.

 

What? The first line of his post was:

lol Veneuela and Argentina are more miserable than Sudan where folks are starving and they have an active civil war. More miserable than Afghanistan and Rawanda. /i]

 

I agree with that. I'm just arguing that whatever it tries to measure, it likely does a bad job because of the nature of the formula. It's too simplistic to do anything well. It's like trying to measure the value of an NBA player by adding up PTS + REB + AST + STL + BLK - TO.

Is a player that scores 25 PTS any nothing else equally valuable to one who scores 0 PTS and 25 BLKs? If you score 15 PTS and have 15 TOs, are you equally valuable to a player who does nothing at all? Just adding and subtracting numbers that have different valuation scales is generally a terrible way to come up with a useful index.

 

He didn't say whether Venezuela is doing poorly

 

Yeah I dont have a problem with that. Its a simplistic measure, sort of like PER.

Wouldn't have guess Venezuela would be worse than Sudan on any economic indicators. Much less four big ones.

It'll be interesting if Greece goes off the Euro how it does in relation.

 

Agreed - I would think Greece would rocket near the top of that list if they break with the Euro. They are already 19th despite low inflation and lending costs thanks to the Euro. Their inflation rate will immediately go through the roof (though I guess it depends on what the starting point is since it will be a one-time devaluation) as will their lending rates. Unemployment is already sky high and I can't imagine GDP growth will be good for a year or two, at the very least.

 

How can there be so much misery on this beautiful rock?

 

@ReutersJamie: ICYMI, S&P says Venezuela's GDP will shrink by as much as 7% this year, and inflation could top 100%. Yes, 100%.

 

And by that measurement, it's better to live in Venezuela than the US.

 

Not necessarily. The "reporting" of deaths/suicides/murder in Venezuela is very arbitrary and official numbers are not monitored. When the press in Venezuela has attempted to count the bodies going into the morgue, they have been turned away and told to stop monitoring the situation.

Venezuela may not be Syria at this point, but it is one of the absolute worst places on the planet and there is little hope of it getting better. The level of violence and the social turmoil is terrible. The crime rate is arguably the worst in the world.

 

He probably isn't fulfilling a vendetta against particular countries, but just doing the math on his little formula. Still, the formula he came up with is very libertarian in its construction, thinking there's some high correlation between economic indicators and human happiness -- so his bio isn't surprising. It's an index that might show something, but misery isn't it. Since he wants to call it a Misery Index though, I'll just say its crap and move on.

 

If you are going to argue the "reporting" figures than there are a whole lots of numbers from a whole lots of countries that you can question.

 

Quote for truth.

 

This.

I do not believe that they hand picked Venezuela to put at the top as some sort of proof of the failure of leftish policies.

Yeah..... that is the point. Why when someone points to first world numbers as proof of a third world country not being so bad is flawed. Properly reporting numbers requires money, proper facilities, time and a government that wants accurate numbers. Venezuela has none of those.

 

they do have cheap gas, great beaches and beautiful women...so there's that!

 

All three are true.

It is also a very beautiful country.

Unfortunately it is a complete hell hole based on a number of factors (internal and external).

I suggest adding "walking the streets of the bario in Caracas at midnight" to your bucket list.

 

There is obviously room for disagreement over the definition of "one of the absolute worst places on the planet," but I think you are being hyperbolic. There are countless other place where people are worse off than Venezuela; in fact, I would say that Venezuela is around the world average as well as close to the average for Latin America. Economically it is in pretty bad shape, but that's what you get when you have an extraction economy based on one resources. Even if the Chavista's had not come to power, Venezuela would still be utterly screwed by this downturn just like every other extraction economy in history which has a commodity that dropped in price or was replaced.

I think it is very likely that, as people continue to hurt economically, they will demand political change. It's like in the U.S., the next election will be a referendum on the economy and a bad economy is not a very good climate for incumbents even if the downturn is for the most part outside of their control (e.g. Republicans after GWB presidency).

Here are some other imperfect indicators:

Freedom House, measuring political freedom and civil rights, has Venezuela in the middle of countries being assessed. World Bank - Venezuela beats the world average in infant mortality, maternal mortality, literacy, primary completion rate, and under 5 mortality rate. Of note is that much of the Worldbank data does not capture last two years. UNDP - Human Development Index has Venezuela beating the world average. Data from 2013 so won't capture recent economic downturn. Homicide Rate is very high and rate of violent crime is also likely extremely high, but as other posters have indicated, Venezuela at least appears to be reporting unlike basically every country in Africa and every other country embroiled in armed conflict.