Socialism failing yet again

Via Texas Rainmaker:

There’s just no denying the impact Hugo Chavez has had...

Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

President Hugo Chavez’s administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price.
...
Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the last four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

Coming to theaters Fall 2008?

This is yet another example in a long laundry list of examples of the failure of socialism. As Thomas Sowell wisely notes: "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."