Progressive#learnMMTers laugh at you when you say that Venezuela’s inflation illustrates a failure of a huge Welfare State run amuck. Some more astute Economic Progreesive#MMTers will say it was the fall in oil prices that triggered Venezuela’s inflation. That it’s a fall in production that causes inflation.

News flash! Venezuela did compromise its ability to produce things using the high price in oil to import the things heretofore it didn’t need or at least not as much. Venezuela hollowed out its productive capacity of other things, instead relying on oil to create a gigantic Welfare State. For example, its agricultural production plummeted as the good life could be had through the bloated Welfare State and small “peasant” farmers abandoned their fields.

Sorry Progressive#learnMMT, Venezuela is an example of the failure of a overblown Social Welfare State out of control as it meets the very definition they cite for inflation – compromised Production. Then the Progressive#MMTers conspiracy theorists come out to play, It was a conspiracy of “evil capitalists” that took Venezuela down. Tell me again where was Venezuela getting all those imports it needed, from the “evil capitalists”. And we got the data too!