An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez (FA, Mar/Apr)

[northzax]

An Empty Revolution
The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez
Francisco Rodríguez

Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008

Summary: Even critics of Hugo Chávez tend to concede that he has made helping the poor his top priority. But in fact, Chávez's government has not done any more to fight poverty than past Venezuelan governments, and his much-heralded social programs have had little effect. A close look at the evidence reveals just how much Chávez's "revolution" has hurt Venezuela's economy -- and that the poor are hurting most of all.

On December 2, when Venezuelans delivered President Hugo Chávez his first electoral defeat in nine years, most analysts were taken by surprise. According to official results, 50.7 percent of voters rejected Chávez's proposed constitutional reform, which would have expanded executive power, gotten rid of presidential term limits, and paved the way for the construction of a "socialist" economy. It was a major reversal for a president who just a year earlier had won a second six-year term with 62.8 percent of the vote, and commentators scrambled to piece together an explanation. They pointed to idiosyncratic factors, such as the birth of a new student movement and the defection of powerful groups from Chávez's coalition. But few went so far as to challenge the conventional wisdom about how Chávez has managed to stay in power for so long.

Although opinions differ on whether Chávez's rule should be characterized as authoritarian or democratic, just about everyone appears to agree that, in contrast to his predecessors, Chávez has made the welfare of the Venezuelan poor his top priority. His government, the thinking goes, has provided subsidized food to low-income families, redistributed land and wealth, and poured money from Venezuela's booming oil industry into health and education programs. It should not be surprising, then, that in a country where politics was long dominated by rich elites, he has earned the lasting support of the Venezuelan poor.

I suggest reading the entire thing, Rodriguez was Chief Economist of the National Assembly from 2000-2004 (handpicked by Mr. Chavez) and is now a professor at Wesleyan.

[Demeter]

1. Expecting to Turn Around 300 Years of Colonialism in 9 Is a Tad Demanding

Sounds like sour grapes.

If nothing else, I like Chavez for the enemies he makes.

Unless one can claim that Chevez is personally responsible for what happened to the author's little governmental game plan, I would be inclined to ignore this. Democracies that divide the power up among many bureaucracts are like that. Hit a rough patch, a dishonest player, and there goes the game.

[northzax]

2. did you read it?

or just comment (that's fast reading, if you did)? Every major social welfare indicator is equal to, or lower than, the equivalent when Chavez was first elected, despite quintupling of theoretical government revenues.

here are just a few (from the Venezuelan Central Bank, according to the article):

The percentage of underweight babies, for example, increased from 8.4 percent to 9.1 percent between 1999 and 2006. During the same period, the percentage of households without access to running water rose from 7.2 percent to 9.4 percent, and the percentage of families living in dwellings with earthen ?oors multiplied almost threefold, from 2.5 percent to 6.8 percent

government revenue from exports has quintupled, and more people are living in dirt-floored houses? not just more people, but a higher percentage of people? more people do not have access to running water? where's it going?

[Demeter]

3. Yes, Thank You, I Did

and I do read quite fast.

There is a lag between money applied to a problem and progress registered. It can take years, if not generations, to recover from privation. The proper indicator is rate of change--rate of change in population vs rate of change in living conditions. An inadequate system will deteriorate as population grows. A recovering system will first register a slowdown of that rate of decline before the turnaround. Without some careful analysis, an article like this is just spin.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. re: the poor little babies --

Infant mortality has continued to decline annually at a rate of 3.4%.

Wouldn't that suggest that more babies are living that would otherwise have died? Wouldn't that suggest that those babies that are living might be that INCREASE of underweight babies?

BTW, what has the population increase been? If the population is growing, and the number of non-dirt floors is also growing, but at a lower rate, wouldn't that result in a HIGHER rate of people living with dirt floors? (ON EDIT: ) Particularly when the population growth is, as it always seems to be, highest in the most impoverished neighborhoods?

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

EDIT AGAIN: Weird. My : followed by ) turned into :) I was not really getting smily about impoverished neighborhoods...

[northzax]

7. well, there's always this data

(by the way, fetal birth weight is an indicator of maternal health, not neccesarily infant health)

so here's the UN Human Development Report Index number(which establishes an index using Life Expentancy, Equivalent purchasing power and enrollment in education)



Venezuela's line has dropped to the same improvement plane as Sub-Saharan Africa and below both the aggregate and slope for LA and the Caribbean. Lemme guess, US government plot?

edit: sorry, forgot my link: http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_VEN.html

second edit: posted the wrong chart...

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. As I said, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

As your own link shows (not the misleading portion you exerpted from it) all the trends in Venezuela are positive, none are negative. It is in the upper half of all the listings where the top of the list is good, and in the lower half of all the listings when the bottom of the list is good.

"The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality..."

In fact, looking at the chart you provided, Venezuela has a HIGHER HDI than Tunisia despite having a LOWER GDP per capita. That would indicate it is doing something RIGHT.

[northzax]

10. sorry, posted the wrong chart

fixed now. and the point is that other countries in the region, without the burden of quintupling their revenues in the past decade, are improving faster, and have passed Venezuela on the line.

but hey, if you want to be better than Tunisia and are happy with that, it's cool.

[bemildred]

4. One does wonder what FA thinks about the deteriorating indicators here in the good old USA? nt

[Doctor_J]

6. Don't forget that Hugo's battling the US as well

We're overtly and covertly trying to sink him, so the progress may be slow. That's not to say that everything he's doing is right, but there's a lot to overcome

[northzax]

8. really?

what exactly is the US doing to increase the number of people in Venezuela living without running water? how about the percentage of the population living in houses with dirt floors? percentage of government spending used for human welfare?

once President Obama or Clinton is in charge, can we drop this silly excuse already? it's been almost a decade, and everything is trending DOWN. by my count, the government has spent almost $5 billion on housing related issues in the past 5 years, and yet the housing situation is worse. go figure?

[Doctor_J]

11. the CIA helped to remove him from office bodily 5 years ago

Do you think he's just been left alone since then?

[northzax]

14. you mean we're ripping out plumbing

from the houses of poor Venezuelans? and their flooring too?

ah, it doesn't matter, they have some nice new MiGs, at least. look good for flyovers. since Chavez took full control in 2002, he has had an extra $400billion US to play with in the budget. that's the revenues that should have come into PDVSA. for a country that only officially spends $50b/year, a bonus of $25-50b is quite large. where's it going?

[stimbox]

17. What were the previous Venezuelan governments doing about it (poverty)?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Your author was described as writing anti-Chavez hit pieces long ago.

Here's a good look at some of his feverish efforts:

~snip~
Just like the coup plotters of '02, he's got no problem exploiting the media as a weapon against someone he opposes. Only this time, it's a leftist, not a rightist, media outlet he's exploiting, hoping to twist the minds of impressionable readers. And since anyone can post to the Guardian's comment pages, it's just ripe for that kind of blatant propaganda. May no one fall into the tar pit, the snake pit--or the bullshit.
(snip/)

http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/2007/01/comment_is_free_and_so_is_bull.html

[northzax]

13. right, evil rightist

I forgot. my bad. guess his stats are all wrong then (oh wait, you mean they came from the Chavez controlled Venezuela Central Bank? damn corporate whores Chavez appointed there, huh?)

follow the money, amigo, follow the money. where exactly is the bonus $50billion a year going?

[DanInDC]

15. See this response paper.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research paper, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/an-empty-research-agenda-the-creation-of-myths-about-contemporary-venezuela/">"An Empty Research Agenda: The Creation of Myths About Contemporary Venezuela" responds to allegations made in this article. It shows that some of the allegations are altogether wrong, and others grossly exaggerated and/or misleading.

The Foreign Affairs article alleges - among other things - that under the Chavez administration inequality has increased in Venezuela, that poverty reduction has been slow relative to economic growth, that social spending has been a low priority for the Venezuelan government, that the poor have suffered declines in their health and living standards, and that Venezuela's current account surplus faces elimination due to import growth.

The CEPR paper shows that all of these allegations are wrong.

In the five years since the government of President Chavez got control over the country's national oil industry there has been a substantial decline in inequality, the poverty rate has been cut in half, and unemployment by more than half. Real (inflation-adjusted) social spending per capita in Venezuela increased by 314 percent from 1998-2006. The current account surplus is still very large, at more than 8 percent of GDP. The paper also shows that the article does not present evidence to suggest literacy has not improved in Venezuela.

It would be remarkable if this macroeconomic and spending picture were compatible with the dire picture of Venezuela that the Foreign Affairs article paints; the CEPR paper shows that it is not.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Thanks for the report by Mark Weisbrot. He's a careful, and serious source.

It's great seeing his response to this load.

Welcome to D.U., DanInDC. :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: