Doubling Down on Doom

It only took a projected inflation rate of 1 mil

lion percent for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to (sort of ) admit that socialism is a recipe for failure.

Amid frequent power outages in the capital city Caracas and a dwindling national food supply, Maduro stopped blaming the United States for Venezuela’s problems, announcing that “the production models we’ve tried so far have failed, and the responsibility is ours — mine and yours.”

Sure: A public that never had a fair chance to vote him out of office is to blame, too. And his solution is more socialism. Maduro plans to save his country by revaluing its useless currency, taking a vehicle census to find new ways to ration gas and raising taxes on imports. All to raise revenue for a government (kept in power purely by military force) that has impoverished the nation.

Venezuela’s GDP is set to shrink another 10 percent this year, though its oil reserves rival Saudi Arabia’s. And US prosecutors are now investigating Team Maduro’s role in a $1.2 billion money-laundering scheme.

Fans of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, take note: Real socialism doesn’t bring more money to the poor — it only drives the rich to flee while destroying the middle class.

Venezuela stands as a grim testament to the true fruits of socialism. For everyone except those at the top of the regime, it levels the playing field — into poverty.