by Rick Lowe
Little has been said about improvements in the lives of citizen’s of Venezuela since Mr. Hugo Chavez was elected.
Of course he was elected on a leftist (socialist) or populist agenda promising to improve the lot of his average country folk. While this is a noble cause, wealth is not created by taking it from other people. But we digress.
Mr. Andres Oppenheimer has had a couple interesting columns in the Miami Herald about the status of the people in poverty in Venezuela.
A few months ago he notes that Venezuela’s official statistics institute (National Statistics Institute – INE) had reported “poverty had increased by ii percent since Hugo Chavez took office in 1999…”.
He goes on to say that “after a public scolding by the president (Chavez) - that poverty has suddenly plummeted to pre-1999 levels.”
See today’s Miami Herald and read the entire article here at this link.
Like Mr. Oppenheimer, we hope that Mr. Chavez will allow these new figures to be independently corroborated.
