They aren't even lucky. I'm bordering on saying BLESSED.
They'd be on failed state status so fukking fast.
Venezuela Introduces Food Rationing
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They'd be on failed state status so fukking fast.
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theworldismine13
God Emperor of SOHH
Except you admitted above that Socialism and Socialist policies won WW2
i did? i dont recall that
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You admitted it by deflecting from my point and line of questioning by using Sean Hannity slogans
"but Venezuela is not at war"
theworldismine13
God Emperor of SOHH
You admitted it by deflecting from my point and line of questioning by using Sean Hannity slogans
"but Venezuela is not at war"
my bad i didnt realize you were making a serious argument that food rationing won WWII, but now that i see you are i can officially dismiss it as socialist gibberish
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It helped us win the war. That's not even debatable.
Food rationing, government taking over the means of production from almost every sector, heavy government subsidies. All that and mix in the New Deal and the vast expansion of labor rights and social safety nets.
All democratic socialism policies.
Government even banned certain forms of entertainment and leisurely activities:
Rationing medicine too:
Rationing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
After all that Socialism and Government regulation, America came out as the wealthiest and most vibrant country in the world, with the largest middle class.
"heavily subsidized" 
Domingo Halliburton
Handmade in USA
I find arguments that are framed as either this or that one way or another kind of pointless. First off, the united states was never a free market laizze-faire capitalist system in the first place. Its a mixed economy of capitalism and socialism. So...yep.
Also, you can look at each individual situation on its own merits right? In this case, the government has subsidized food to a point that its making it where those from the outside view it as an opportunity to get goods at a cheap price by importing them in. On one hand, yeah you can try to criminalizing the sale of food but with any good like food....or the Mary J, there will always be an underground market because of greed or wanting more than being provided to you. On the other hand, you can maybe reduces your subsidies and privatize it to some extent to minimize this problem but I guess that would be counter-productive to a purely socialist society. However, which one is a bit more concerning, the possibility of privatizing and allowing a food market to open up that can compete with the government prices or having the government dictate how much food you're allowed to have in order to protect its somewhat unnatural system? This particular case fights basic human nature in my opinion.
Also yeah we subsidize some of our crops too but the subsidies are more political tools to please farmers and food lobbies than it is actually for the overall good of our society. In fact it has had a negative effect given the surplus of corn in particular and as a result, this is why every damn thing has corn syrup or some variation of a corn product because we have to find a way to utilize our surplus crop.
In the case of WW2, the difference is that rationing was utilized as a temopary measure and secondly, I don't think anyone would make a broad generalization that it helped us win the war. If anything, I haven't even seen evidence it had any net positive effect on the war outside of maybe the rationing or oil which is more understandable. A lot of ideas and actions taken by government are in hindsight either ineffective or worse counter-productive. I admit ignorance on the exact effect of rationing on WW2 but just because we did it, doesn't mean it was necessarily a plus. By that logic Japanese internment was a plus too.
Also, you can look at each individual situation on its own merits right? In this case, the government has subsidized food to a point that its making it where those from the outside view it as an opportunity to get goods at a cheap price by importing them in. On one hand, yeah you can try to criminalizing the sale of food but with any good like food....or the Mary J, there will always be an underground market because of greed or wanting more than being provided to you. On the other hand, you can maybe reduces your subsidies and privatize it to some extent to minimize this problem but I guess that would be counter-productive to a purely socialist society. However, which one is a bit more concerning, the possibility of privatizing and allowing a food market to open up that can compete with the government prices or having the government dictate how much food you're allowed to have in order to protect its somewhat unnatural system? This particular case fights basic human nature in my opinion.
Also yeah we subsidize some of our crops too but the subsidies are more political tools to please farmers and food lobbies than it is actually for the overall good of our society. In fact it has had a negative effect given the surplus of corn in particular and as a result, this is why every damn thing has corn syrup or some variation of a corn product because we have to find a way to utilize our surplus crop.
In the case of WW2, the difference is that rationing was utilized as a temopary measure and secondly, I don't think anyone would make a broad generalization that it helped us win the war. If anything, I haven't even seen evidence it had any net positive effect on the war outside of maybe the rationing or oil which is more understandable. A lot of ideas and actions taken by government are in hindsight either ineffective or worse counter-productive. I admit ignorance on the exact effect of rationing on WW2 but just because we did it, doesn't mean it was necessarily a plus. By that logic Japanese internment was a plus too.
Domingo Halliburton
Handmade in USA
1. Every economy is a mixed economy.
2. If they had true socialism it should destroy any price mechanism out there. Because everything would be shared and there would be no need to account for things like costs.... of anything.
3. The management of their currency is on Zimbabwe levels now. So much so that they should just use the yuan because china will soon be their new overlords.
4. History is going to look back on this country and say they squandered the greatest natural resource on earth at the time (assuming we move past oil).
Ghanaian Armor
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88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Venezuela Seizes Nestle, Polar Warehouse to Build Housing
by Anatoly KurmanaevAndrew Rosati
July 30, 2015 — 12:35 PM EDTUpdated on July 30, 2015 — 3:07 PM EDT
Member of national guard patrols a supermarket in Caracas.
Venezuelan soldiers seized a food distribution center rented by companies including Nestle SA, PepsiCo. Inc and Empresas Polar SA in Caracas as the government looks to boost support ahead of elections.
The companies were given two months to remove equipment and stock at the La Yaguara industrial park, which will be converted to social housing, workers said. Several dozen workers of Polar, the largest Venezuelan food company, remain on the premises in protest against the expropriation.
“I’m scared not just for my job but for the entire country,” Beatrice Pellicer, a 24-year-old Polar corporate relations worker, said outside the warehouse sealed by armed police and National Guards. “We all just found out this morning that we have 60 days to leave.”
President Nicolas Maduro in recent months has stepped up attacks on the private sector, which he accuses of profiteering and sabotage, as his popularity wanes ahead of the Dec. 6 congressional elections. He has blamed Polar and other private food companies for the chronic shortages of basic products and spiraling inflation, while maintaining currency and price controls that have made most of national production unprofitable.
Government ‘Terms’
“This is a scare tactic to get private companies to cooperate with the government ahead of the elections: helping them keep the right stores supplied and work on their terms,” Risa Grais-Targow, Latin America political analyst at consultancy Eurasia Group, said by telephone from Washington. “I think the government understands that taking over a company like Polar will create dangerous social dynamics.”
Carmen Arreaza, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher, and a few dozen other government supporters gathered in front of the warehouse to demonstrate support for the expropriation.
“This measure is just and it needs to happen as soon as possible,” Arreaza said. “There is an economic war here and this company, Polar, is at the heart of it. They hide products from the population, and inflate their prices!”
The government had first notified the landlord of plans to expropriate the industrial park in 2013, Nestle spokesman Andres Alegrett said by telephone from Caracas on Thursday. Nestle used the facility to dispatch about 10 percent of its products in the country, supplying sweets and drinks to the western side of Greater Caracas, he said.
“We are working to redirect the products to other facilities across the country,” Alegrett said.
It remains unclear whether the companies will keep the merchandise in the affected warehouses, Polar’s planning manager Douglas Vielma said Thursday afternoon.
The La Yaguara industrial park is also being used by U.S. grain trader Cargill Inc., Mexican bottler Coca-Cola Femsa SAB and industrial gases supplier Praxair Inc.
Spokesmen for PepsiCo., Praxair and Cargill, as well as the Information Ministry, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Coca-Cola Femsa spokesman declined to comment
Venezuela Seizes Nestle, Polar Warehouse to Build Housing
@Domingo Halliburton @Futuristic Eskimo
by Anatoly KurmanaevAndrew Rosati
July 30, 2015 — 12:35 PM EDTUpdated on July 30, 2015 — 3:07 PM EDT
Member of national guard patrols a supermarket in Caracas.
Venezuelan soldiers seized a food distribution center rented by companies including Nestle SA, PepsiCo. Inc and Empresas Polar SA in Caracas as the government looks to boost support ahead of elections.
The companies were given two months to remove equipment and stock at the La Yaguara industrial park, which will be converted to social housing, workers said. Several dozen workers of Polar, the largest Venezuelan food company, remain on the premises in protest against the expropriation.
“I’m scared not just for my job but for the entire country,” Beatrice Pellicer, a 24-year-old Polar corporate relations worker, said outside the warehouse sealed by armed police and National Guards. “We all just found out this morning that we have 60 days to leave.”
President Nicolas Maduro in recent months has stepped up attacks on the private sector, which he accuses of profiteering and sabotage, as his popularity wanes ahead of the Dec. 6 congressional elections. He has blamed Polar and other private food companies for the chronic shortages of basic products and spiraling inflation, while maintaining currency and price controls that have made most of national production unprofitable.
Government ‘Terms’
“This is a scare tactic to get private companies to cooperate with the government ahead of the elections: helping them keep the right stores supplied and work on their terms,” Risa Grais-Targow, Latin America political analyst at consultancy Eurasia Group, said by telephone from Washington. “I think the government understands that taking over a company like Polar will create dangerous social dynamics.”
Carmen Arreaza, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher, and a few dozen other government supporters gathered in front of the warehouse to demonstrate support for the expropriation.
“This measure is just and it needs to happen as soon as possible,” Arreaza said. “There is an economic war here and this company, Polar, is at the heart of it. They hide products from the population, and inflate their prices!”
The government had first notified the landlord of plans to expropriate the industrial park in 2013, Nestle spokesman Andres Alegrett said by telephone from Caracas on Thursday. Nestle used the facility to dispatch about 10 percent of its products in the country, supplying sweets and drinks to the western side of Greater Caracas, he said.
“We are working to redirect the products to other facilities across the country,” Alegrett said.
It remains unclear whether the companies will keep the merchandise in the affected warehouses, Polar’s planning manager Douglas Vielma said Thursday afternoon.
The La Yaguara industrial park is also being used by U.S. grain trader Cargill Inc., Mexican bottler Coca-Cola Femsa SAB and industrial gases supplier Praxair Inc.
Spokesmen for PepsiCo., Praxair and Cargill, as well as the Information Ministry, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Coca-Cola Femsa spokesman declined to comment
Venezuela Seizes Nestle, Polar Warehouse to Build Housing
@Domingo Halliburton @Futuristic Eskimo
Rationing in the US during WWII was mainly to prevent panic and hoarding. The US was fairly self-contained and only a few normally imported items had to be rationed like coffee from Brazil and sugar from Hawaii and the Philippines. The US still produced sugar cane, sugar beets, and honey. The fact that Americans only had to cut down to 1/2 pound of sugar a week should tell us something.
There was no shortage of gasoline, but rubber. Rubber mostly came from southeast Asia and that region was under Japanese control.
On the other hand, prior to WWII the United Kingdom imported two-thirds of its food. Food rationing was not only necessary for the war but continued until 1954. Post-war UK food rationing is highlighted in the movie 84, Charing Cross Road. The UK currently imports 40% of its food and may experience shortages this summer. The Calais border crisis is preventing trucks from leaving the UK to pick up food.
Why rationing didn't end until 1954 in the UK:
Because lots of Britain's food is imported and we didn't have any foreign currency to pay for the food.
Our finances were disastrously poor, flirting with bankrupt, at the end of WW2, and as we'd turned more of our economy (55%) over to armament production than any other belligerent power we had to perform a painful readjustment back to a peacetime economy.
This wasn't helped by the USA suddenly terminating Lend-Lease in 1945. The UK had been relying on Lend-Lease imports of food and just couldn't afford to pay for imports due to lack of exports (by 1945, exports were barely at 1/3 of the level in 1939).
The USA provided a loan of $4.33bn (equivalent to US$56 billion in 2013) that was supposed to tide us over until we got back on our feet. British politicians had been hoping for a gift, but the USA was not that generous.
And unfortunately one of the US loan conditions was that we made sterling convertible. Within a month, nations with sterling balances had drawn almost a billion dollars ($13Bn in 2013 dollars) from our dollar reserves and we had to devalue, making imports more expensive.
And now we had to use our scarce dollars to pay the loan back.
To add insult to injury, many of our foreign currency generating assets had been sold at fire-sale prices early in the war to pay for US arms shipments (Cash and Carry was replaced with Lend-Lease when Britain was within months of going bankrupt in 1941) and many of our foreign markets had been irretrievably lost.
So, quite simply we couldn't afford to buy food from abroad.
The picture above is actually of people celebrating the end of rationing. Note the jam and cake, both of which use (previously rationed) sugar.
The last payment on the US loan was made in 2006.
Why did rationing in the UK only end in 1954 when WW2 ended in 1945? - Quora
Our finances were disastrously poor, flirting with bankrupt, at the end of WW2, and as we'd turned more of our economy (55%) over to armament production than any other belligerent power we had to perform a painful readjustment back to a peacetime economy.
This wasn't helped by the USA suddenly terminating Lend-Lease in 1945. The UK had been relying on Lend-Lease imports of food and just couldn't afford to pay for imports due to lack of exports (by 1945, exports were barely at 1/3 of the level in 1939).
The USA provided a loan of $4.33bn (equivalent to US$56 billion in 2013) that was supposed to tide us over until we got back on our feet. British politicians had been hoping for a gift, but the USA was not that generous.
And unfortunately one of the US loan conditions was that we made sterling convertible. Within a month, nations with sterling balances had drawn almost a billion dollars ($13Bn in 2013 dollars) from our dollar reserves and we had to devalue, making imports more expensive.
And now we had to use our scarce dollars to pay the loan back.
To add insult to injury, many of our foreign currency generating assets had been sold at fire-sale prices early in the war to pay for US arms shipments (Cash and Carry was replaced with Lend-Lease when Britain was within months of going bankrupt in 1941) and many of our foreign markets had been irretrievably lost.
So, quite simply we couldn't afford to buy food from abroad.
The picture above is actually of people celebrating the end of rationing. Note the jam and cake, both of which use (previously rationed) sugar.
The last payment on the US loan was made in 2006.
Why did rationing in the UK only end in 1954 when WW2 ended in 1945? - Quora
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