AProudLefty
The remora of JPP
Venezuela is a poor example compared to the ones I gave. For example, Albania had a seriously and totally socialist economy based on the worst of Mao and Red China for decades. That left it one of the poorest nations in Europe. It also--like any heavily socialist nation--had one of the most developed and insidious black markets in Europe. Today it's known as the car theft capital of Europe as well as for various criminal scams, etc. That disfunction came out of it's economic ruin under Communism.
N. Korea is an example of Leftist everything carried to an extreme. The economy is in tatters and there are black markets everywhere there. Threats of brutal punishment for operating a black market have not dissuaded a desperate population in the least.
Communism is the more virulent form of Socialism, that's all. Socialism is equally insidious when it comes to economies. Britain was wrecked by Socialist economics and has only recovered since those policies were reversed or dropped. Their aircraft industry was ruined to a point it will never recover. The automobile industry suffered massively from such operations as British Leyland. As in America, and elsewhere, public housing turned into a poverty trap that attracted crime.
If the Left gets their way in the US, it too will go down the road to economic ruin. For example, the Left has driven manufacturing out of California. California at one time was the world leader in aerospace and aircraft manufacturing. Today it's all but totally gone driven out by regulation and environmentalism run amok. It's the state with by far the largest population of homeless and welfare recipients. The Middle Class there is in steep decline. It isn't Capitalism or a relatively free market economy that's killing California. It's Leftist economic policy coupled with general Leftist ideas.
If the Right gets their way in the US, the US will become a theocracy country.
See I can make a similar claim.