I really wish to hear from people who support leftist causes what they think of this and if there's anything, any hypothetical event, that they would accept, if happened, as a proof that leftist policies are bad.
For example, the Venezuela government started programs to eliminate analphabetism, increased the number of doctors and free hospitals (in a program with the help of Cuba), reduced the infant death rate, increased the education budget, the access to potable water and other things like that. Granted, none of these measures are leftist per se, but also, these are not the things a right wing government cares about (at least not our right wing governments).
I think the reason so many people in Latin America is leftist is not ideology. It's simply that the other option is not liberalism, free markets and laisse faire. The alternative is chronism, medieval institutions (feudalism is alive in a lot of places), privatization of earnings and nationalization of loses.
But let me make another one. We will not agree on an answer, you don't even have to reply if you don't want, but I want to ask anyway: you don't see any relationship between the reasoning behind free hospitals and the Venezuela economic collapse?
When I talked about an increase in health and education expenditures, I was talking about increase in the percentage of the budget, so they were done at expense of other things, and it began before the increase in oil prices. The years previous to Chavez, the health budget was 3.5-4.5% and it went up to 6.0%, and remained above 5.0 up to 2010. As you can see, these are not exorbitant expenses, and they are below other countries' expenditures like Uruguay, Tanzania or Uganda [1].
The economical crisis is not because the government increasing expenditures in some basic human needs, but because there hasn't been a cut down anything at all. There are a lot of valid criticisms that can be done to Venezuela's government, but expending a little bit more in its people is not one, in my opinion.
For example, I support socialized medicine, but don't support nationalizing the economy or strict capital controls. Do I qualify or not? Assuming I do, am I allowed to point out that Venezuela's problems are more likely due to stuff like the last two?
If you only think of the corrupt and incompetent governments as the leftist ones, it's a truism that their policies are failing.
I really wish to hear from people who support rightist causes what they think of this and if there's anything, any hypothetical event, that they would accept, if happened, as a proof that rightist policies are bad.
If you actually read the article they are quite reticent to blame socialism as the root cause but rather economic mismanagement and cronyism. This is a feature of many Latin American states regardless of left or right politics. In contrast socialism seems to be working just fine in Canada and Northern Europe.
In any case the current surge of left-leaning politics in the US is a symptom of massive economic inequality. If rightist politics had an answer for that, anything other than "just work harder," then people wouldn't be so quick to look to the left.
At the heart of both countries current circumstances are _populist_ causes, and it seems to be the combination of populism and oil dependency that's at the heart of Venezuela's current problems.
In short, relying on the price of a commodity being at or above an historically high level to balance your budget is going to lead to large blow-outs in your budget if the price falls drastically. The comparison to Norway is a good one simply because they created a buffer-fund for handling prices swings. Left or right, that seems like sound economic policy.