Yes. It's somewhat simplistic, but look at other similar countries in the region, countries that have less oil wealth. Their production is going up, while Venezuela is a disaster.

Those were political choices which had social and economic consequences for his entire nation - dire ones which have plunged what was once and should still be be a prosperous nation into chaos and financial ruin.

The fact is that political leaders can have a tremendous influence on a nation's prosperity. To ignore this fact is to ignore reality. Such a denier of reality will also be unwilling to place responsibility on those making those (poor) decisions in the first place.

"were the choices of Hugo Chavez responsible for plunging Venezuela into its current socioeconomic crisis?"
Yes

Last question: were the choices of Hugo Chavez responsible for plunging Venezuela into its current socioeconomic crisis?

My claim is those political decisions do not make or break the economy.

You are also factually incorrect about your timing of the economic cycle, but this is moot because I don't accept the opinion that these political decisions are responsible for the economic cycle.

Consider your example of bank bailouts in 08-09. I can accept they caused the recession of 08-09 to end faster and the expansion following it to get going faster. They came at the cost of moral hazard and govt debt taking the place of bank deleveraging. I find political games to assign blame and credit to be beyond asinine. The banking system is structured such that we prime the pump with fiscal policy, get malinvestment, have another crisis, and then do another round of monetary and fiscal stimulus.... fiscal stimulus that will only be possible as long as the USD remains the reserve currency of the world. I think crypto-currencies will supplant it fast. At any rate, this is just an unstable system. It's not the first unstable system I've seen as an engineer, and it's not the first time I've seen people spend their efforts on blaming one another instead of working the problem.

I try to be a stoic and kind person, but I have strong contempt for people responding to an unstable inefficient system with creative narratives to blame one another instead of working the problem. In addition to your timeline being factually wrong about when the recessions/expansions occurred, I find the blame-oriented narratives surrounding them as loathsome as Ayn Rand villains.

Uh, you don't qualify the policies of the Federal Reserve to prop up massive borrowing by the Federal Government a political decision? You don't call the Government bailout of Fannie and Freddie after they were used to prop up sub-prime mortgage lending under Bill Clinton a political decision? You don't call the government's threatening of the major banks to go along with the bailout a political decision?

Good grief, man! Political policies set the stage for everything that happens in an economy. Higher taxes lead to the recession - higher taxes that were introduced by a Democratic Congress under Bush and exacerbated under Obama. Then what happened when the Republicans and Trump slashed taxes? The economy came roaring back. The EXACT same thing happened under Carter (who with Democrats raised taxes leading directly to a recession) and then Reagan (who slashed taxes despite Democrats which led to an economic boom).

And we don't even have to look at the US to see this. What is happening in France under Macron? Riots and protests in the streets because of gasoline taxes - a public policy decision. Europe's crime rates have skyrocketed since they took an open borders position - a public policy. I can't figure out whether you are playing devil's advocate or willfully blind because there are heaps upon heaps of evidence of public policy decisions and how they affect the economy.

"Regarding the last paragraph, I couldn't care much less who gets the blame."

Obviously not, because you keep voting for the primary perpetrators of bad policy.

"The facts are that the economy sucked under Obama because of Democrat policies. "
I think there's no bit of truth to that. The recession of '08-09 was not caused by politics. The recovery and expansion following the recession were not caused by politics. We're due for a recession, and it won't be anyone's fault.

Regarding the last paragraph, I couldn't care much less who gets the blame. I don't get any benefit from their games. I am not surprised politicians have found a way to increase borrowing, spending, and gov't intrusiveness. I just wish there were some way they clone Obama and at least get half way back there, not even all the way, but just cut spending and borrowing to levels between 2016 and now.

To combat AOC and Bernie leading the national effort toward socialism, we need to cut it off at its roots: the concept of the 1 percent. If I understand the video, it clearly demonstrates there is a certain percentage of people who benefit from socialism. The socialists would have you believe that it is more than half due to "concentration of wealth". But, as we all know, after the 1% are stripped of their wealth, there will be the 2%. The 2% will be comprised of the original 1% and the next 1%, and so on until 50 percent of the population has been taxed to give 50 percent of the total income to the lower 50 percent. What socialists don't admit is that the total is not fixed, but increases tremendously due to competition and free trade. And since it would be unreasonable to expect the top 50 percent to work for more than their new pay, it means that 100 percent of the people would make double what the lower 50 percent originally made. In the US assume the median income is 35,000. Also consider the total taxable income divided by the number of total tax returns is about 72,000. As you can see, on the whole, the total amount of income would drop by about 50 percent. So, you would have all people in the US living on half of the income if we all were paid by the median. That would result in financial ruin since neither the government nor the banks would be able to pay a debt or float a loan. And this would result -- of course -- in physical compulsion (i.e. force) waged by those privileged to be sanctioned by a socialist government -- with guns.

Yes. Relying totally on a citizen militia is "concept car" that would never be practical on the road. They couldn't do missile defense, for example. I just think we should trend in that direction, slowly dismantling the military industrial complex, allowing it to retool for whatever peaceful civilian business purposes. That would mean that when some atrocity happens in Syria, we wouldn't be able to do much. We would be upset if bad guys like ISIS took over. We would have citizens' faith-based and secular humanitarian groups doing what we can. We'd have a great country with liberty and opportunity that people could look to as a model. But if you come here to attack, we all have guns and equipment, and we don't wait helplessly for the authorities to act. The army of citizens would be everywhere.

I think it would still be better to have national defense by having Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force, still well-trained and ready, even in peacetime. Even so, the money (under the system I advocate) would not be thrown away on so many things it is now, so there would probably be enough for it.

No they won't. They'll write for themselves the same provisions they wrote in the original ACA and exempt themselves.

You're welcome to think whatever you wish. The facts are that the economy sucked under Obama because of Democrat policies. Now we're under Republican policies and the economy is doing well. Those are indisputable facts - not opinions or wishful thinking. And let's think about just exactly what happened that turned things around?

1. Tax breaks. Lowering the tax rates gave everyone more money to spend the way they wanted to.
2. Tax breaks enable lower prices for business goods and services.
3. Less regulation means lower regulatory costs (which get passed on to consumers) and better business flexibility.
4. Regulation rollback means less control by the bureaucratic state.

These are all policies which Democrats - led by Obama - put in place which were then reversed under Trump and the Republicans.

I agree with you that the borrowing is still a huge problem, but again, most of the obstruction to lowering borrowing is being led - again - by Democrats. This is especially true in the Senate where they continue to use the filibuster to block votes on any bills they don't approve of. So while there are a minority of Republicans who have gone along with the Democrats, this is a problem caused and owned by the Democrats.

National defense could be reduced by having a militia that's only mobilized for training and if an emergency occurs. I don't know how the voluntarily funded police would work, but I like trying radical ideas. The biggest problem I see is a lot of the benefit of having police isn't when you call them but criminals knowing they're there. So the people not buying the sticker would get collateral protection. The same is true, though, from everyone getting protection from criminals knowing many law-abiding citizens are armed; and we don't try to charge people for that protection. So I like experimenting, in a cautious way, with radical ideas like this.

I think all this is nonsense. President Trump doesn't get credit for the expansion and all the things that go with it anymore than President Obama does. The same goes for the recession of 08-09 and President Bush. They had nothing to do with it.

The one thing politicians stand to blame for is the borrowing. I thought the $400 billion a year when Obama was president was staggering. I never imagined it would double in such a short time. It's a problem that will lead to a mini-crisis, one that would be easier to address before it materializes. Getting back to Obama-era deficits would be a huge improvement.

As to police protection, that could be made pretty simple. Once the government was chopped down to its proper functions (which are mighty few), the Law Enforcement Fee could be financed by something like the present sales tax, although voluntary; the stores could pay a percentage (and nearly everyone goes to the store), and once registered and having paid the initial fee, would receive a sticker to put in the window , like the present inspection sticker on a car; if the owner did not agree to pay, he would not be given such a sticker (which would also warn the public that that store was not receiving any police protection); and, if such an owner's store were invaded or robbed, the police would not come to the owner's rescue, because the address would be in the computer as belonging to one who had refused to finance the government. (Under such a system, refusers would be quite few; most would be glad to have such an insurance against crime, especially as their money would not be thrown away on education they did not believe in, art they regarded as blasphemous, studies on mating habits of the fruit fly, etc). As to the Federal government, the national functions (such as Supreme Court, and the armed services) could be financed by a percentage of whatever was in each state's coffers (perhaps 25%), and a man would know that when he paid his Law Enforce-
ment Fee he was also paying for national defense.

He was pretty amazing all right. So amazing that now that Donald Trump is President we actually have a working economy, fewer people on food stamps, more full-time jobs, low unemployment despite the addition of people who had dropped out under Obama, unrest in the Middle East is down, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea is down, Chinese pirating of IP is down, terrorism is down in the US. And I should note that bureaucratic costs are down under Trump (when they had skyrocketed under Obama), we got the pipelines built, domestic energy production now provides enough that we are a net exporter, the IRS is no longer targeting opposing political groups, the EPA is no longer slow-rolling developments and opposing everything the Green Lobby asks them to.

Oh, but immigration is a huge problem - thanks to Obama and the Dems. Oh, and now we're finding out that Obama's Justice Department was involved in spying on Trump during the election. Yup - Obama was just so amazing... [/sarcasm]

I don't know, Circuit...O's statement was pretty damned stupid.

Always ends in government trucks running starving citizens over, and/or government bullets flying into them...

Also, if you don't have the factory (or business) you don't need a road to it, you don't need anyone to protect it, you don't need anyone on call to put out a fire, and you don't have anyone to tax to provide all those services you wouldn't need.

I just had a heart attack...then open heart surgery...quintruple bypass...under socialism, I would have been refused the surgery at age 71...and left to die...

I probably disagree with wherever Warren was going with that, but she's correct. There are some "public goods," i.e. things that are non-excludable. It's reasonable that someone might not want to pay for police patrol, preferring to provide her own protection and take more risk, but there's no way to allow people who want police presence to pay for it while not providing it to those who don't want it. It's the same thing with reducing air pollution.

I think we should try to privatize these things where possible.. Maybe roads could be partially privatized and paid by supply and demand, so there would never be traffic jams. The price would go up until demand = carrying capacity of the roads. At one time there was only one phone company and one cable TV company, and now there's competition. So public goods can be privatized.

The fact that there are public goods ,though, is not in itself an attack on capitalism. The quote is stating fact. Coming from Warren, though, she was likely using it to make a socialistic point.

Capitalism is usually blamed before that happens. (Because many see what is happening and flee, if they can.)

That is a very perceptive statement.

It is exactly how it is.

The tragedy is that the sheeple have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

These 'Would be Socialists' are going to need oxygen if their health bill should happen to pass. They, too, will be waiting in line and looking for a doctor. And the insurance people who lose their jobs will know who to vote for, if they don't already. It might last a few minutes longer than O'BamaCare.

I have read in a book entitled Eighth Moon by someone who escaped from Red China, that there was a period during which people were expected to manufacture scrap metal in yards. She said, "I had turns at all three shifts." But I believe the book said that eventually the manufactured scrap metal was thrown away as no good.