What is socialism? In a free market system, prices are set by buyers and sellers without input from the government. Private property is guaranteed by law. And thegovernment does not have a state-run monopoly in any area of the economy. Socialism is different: massive government spending on welfare, prices set by government, tariffs on imports, nationalizing industries.

Let’s take a look at a case of socialism: Venezuela. Venezuela adopted socialism, and implemented import tariffs, nationalized industry, and imposed price controls. Let’s take a look.

The American Institute for Economic Research explains:

In 1998 [Hugo Chavez] was elected to the Presidency. He immediately worked to deepen and expand the “Bolivarian Revolution,” focused on social welfare programs, nationalizing key industries, and “democratizing” the market system.

[…]The situation eroded quickly, reaching an early head in the summer of 2015. Prices were skyrocketing because of inflation, caused by the government using newly printed money to pay off debts and make payroll. But the government had accused corporations that ran large grocery chains of “price-gouging.”

So, we have inflation in the United States right now. And that inflation was caused by the Biden-Harris regime, which has been in power for nearly 4 years. They caused prices to skyrocket in two ways. First, by raising the price of electricity and gas. They did this because of their climate change alarmism, which caused them to cancel pipelines and deny drilling leases, etc. Second, by spending reckless government spending. And now they, like Hugo Chavez, are trying to blame the inflation they caused on “price-gouging”. Will they adopt the same solutions as Venezuela did? And how will that work out for us?

Here is how the Harris of the Biden-Harris regime intends to respond to the inflation caused by the Biden-Harris regime:

Vice President Harris announced on August 16 that she would place controls on grocery prices.

As attorney general in California, I went after companies that illegally increased prices, including wholesalers that inflated the price of prescription medication and companies that conspired with competitors to keep prices of electronics high. I won more than $1 billion for consumers. (Applause.)

So, believe me, as president, I will go after the bad actors. (Applause.) And I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food.

So, she’s going to go with price controls. Is this the same thing as what communists did in Venezuela? How did it work out there?

Well, here is a report from the Institute for Free Trade:

In 2003, Hugo Chávez declared war on “speculators” and imposed price controls not only on Venezuelan milk, but also on sugar, coffee, beef, chicken, pork, grain, and pasta (he also severely restricted access to foreign currency). According to very unreliable official figures, price controls caused shortages of basic goods to increase from 5% at the outset to over 22.2% in ten years.

Chávez, however, refused to learn the lesson about the price mechanism even as he was unleashing mass scarcity. In 2011, he extended price controls to soap, detergent, shampoo, toilet paper, mouthwash, fruit juice and other products. To take one example, toilet paper was already scarce in Venezuela when Chávez died in 2013, as the government imported 50 million rolls and citizens, downtrodden but not without a sense of humour, shared videos on social media with theories on how to get by without it.

In 2016, scarcity of basic goods reached 82.6% in Caracas according to Luis Vicente León, the head of polling firm Datanalisis. Caracas, León added, was Venezuela’s best-supplied city. Scarcity has only worsened since.

Initially, the Venezuelan regime made up for shortages in national food production with imports paid with oil revenue. However, price controls and expropriations (see point # 2) had already destroyed the country’s productive sector once oil prices began to fall sharply in 2014. Last year, 93% of Venezuelans could not afford food. According to a recent survey, 60% of Venezuelans shed at least 11 kilograms in weight during the last year due to malnutrition.

Right now, supermarkets in America have a profit margin of around 1-2%. If Kamala comes in and artificially lowers their prices, then their suppliers will also have to have price controls. Food producers (especially smaller ones) will stop making products that are price controlled. Grocery stores (especially smaller ones) will stop selling products that are price controlled. Shortages of grocery store products will lead to lines outside of these stores, just like when Jimmy Carter put price controls on gas, and there were gas lines in America. Why think that price controls in America will work any differently than they do in Venezuela? Where is the evidence?