Published March 11th, 2006 by Future Atlas
Venezuela: big-budget social change
A useful introduction to current Venezuelan politics from Smithsonian. An oil-fueled social experiment is changing things.
In recent surveys by the Caracas market research firm Datos, a majority of Venezuelans said they had benefited from government spending on food, education and healthcare. In 2004, the average household income increased by more than 30 percent.
But the experiment’s sustainability is open to question. Said a pollster,
“If you manage populism with good controls and efficiency, you can last a long time. But so far, this is not what Chávez is doing. And if oil prices drop again, the whole revolution becomes a mirage.”