For economy czar of crisis-hit Venezuela, inflation 'does not exist'

[FBaggins]

Venezuela's new economy czar Luis Salas is tasked with controlling what is believed to be the world's highest rate of inflation, but comes to the job with an unusual perspective: that inflation does not really exist.

President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday tapped the 39-year-old sociologist as vice president for the economy amid soaring consumer prices and chronic product shortages, signaling a move toward orthodox socialism in the OPEC nation struggling under low oil prices.

Essays written by Salas describe scarcity and spiraling prices as the result of exploitation by businesses rather than government policy, offering an academic underpinning to the "economic war" explanation that Maduro uses to describe the current malaise of recession, runaway prices and widespread product shortages.

"Inflation does not exist in real life," he wrote in a 2015 pamphlet called "22 Keys to Understanding the Economic War." "When a person goes to a shop and finds that prices have gone up, they are not in the presence of 'inflation.'" Salas has argued against the idea that excessive printing of money causes inflation - an almost universally accepted tenet of macroeconomics. He insists prices rise primarily because corporations seek excessive profit margins.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-idUSKBN0UL27820160107

This would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that it impacts the real lives of the people of Venezuela.

[Marksman_91]

1. Yet another idiot added to the clown car that is the Maduro administration

Wonder if the resident Chavistas in this site will have the gall to say that inflation does not exist in real life as well. Then again, with their comment history, they've demonstrated to be pretty ignorant about how economics work, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do.

[COLGATE4]

3. They don't even bother to try and cover up

their abysmal ignorance anymore. Adding this clown will do wonders for the Venezuelan economy with his philosophical equivalent of "LA LA LA I can't hear you" as he plus his ears and insists that inflation is really all in your head.

[cheapdate]

2. The last election got ugly.

Maduro won by the skin of his teeth.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Someday Someone should start a make-believe university

Someday someone should start an on-line make believe university which jokers can start staffing with particularly clueless and out-of-it academics. So far it looks like we've got Luis Salas and Arthur Laffer in the Economics Department.

[FBaggins]

6. This is one of the problems with communist dictators.

They think that reality must bend to their will... not just the people.

[Vogon_Glory]

7. I Agree But

I agree, but those academics who indulge in such fraud deserve ridicule, at home in VZ as well as abroad. However, ad much as I dislike fools like that sociolpgist presiding over the firther implosion of the Venezuelan economy, I have to laugh to keep from screaming.

Hence the fantasy-baseball style university where he'd be sharing the economics dept with the inventor of the Laffer Curve.

And we need to start filling out fantasy University's journalism department. I nominate Bill O'Reilly for starters.

[FBaggins]

8. I'm with you right up until the Laffer Curve comment

The Laffer Curve itself is absolutely sound economics - just like the price elasticity of demand causing higher profits when you lower the price of your product if it increases demand substantially.

The problem is when conservatives always seem to assume that we're on the side of the curve where lower tax rates necessarily result in higher tax revenue. You can't know for certain whether you're past the equilibrium point until you change the rate (without changing anything else, of course - which never happens). And there's every reason to believe that we're well past that point - and lowering rates will just result in lower tax revenues.

[Bacchus4.0]

5. He shouldn't have any problems then selling dollars in Venezuela to anyone and everyone

at the official 6.3 to 1 rate I assume.