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I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

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Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#21

Post by rafaelm »

v768 wrote: post #11
dexwiz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they just enacted a law that allows the government and corporations to force employees to go work in the fields due the food shortage.

Most of the laws are never applied and specially in the case of the ones like this one that are clearly impossible to apply and mostly for the show.

Well, we don't know how bad things will get. Today they law is a useless paper. Tomorrow if things get bad enough, they could start enforcing it.

I think you are the second person in Venezuela I've found on HN. Check my profile for my contact info.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#22

Post by Locke1689 »

syedkarim wrote: post #17
swe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can happen anywhere there's fiat currency and long supply lines.

I often read that gold is superior to fiat currency, but how would any kind of currency or precious commodity make a difference in this case, since demand is outstripping supply of finite tangible goods.

It wouldn't. Don't believe what you read on the internet about money. The goldbugs are a vocal minority, not taken seriously in real economics discussions.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

syedkarim wrote: post #17
swe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can happen anywhere there's fiat currency and long supply lines.

I often read that gold is superior to fiat currency, but how would any kind of currency or precious commodity make a difference in this case, since demand is outstripping supply of finite tangible goods.

[deleted]

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#24

Post by callalex »

rafaelm wrote: post #15
v768 wrote: post #7

Things have changed a lot since this was written in December. I live in Caracas, there's massive national food shortages. Now you can't have 3 meals a day for a month with 100€, and would spend quite some time finding it (on the black market). Last time I saw sugar, it was around 3€ per kilo. Edit: If you want a realistic picture of how is life today, read this piece, written by a foreign journalist that actually liv…

Yep, I'm living in Barquisimeto and between me and my wife we are making around $160 per month. We are scraping by. Plus we've got a 3 month old baby, who luckily is exclusively breastfeeding, because baby formula is practically non-existent. We had to pool about $60 to buy a sack of sugar in the black market and divide it among a bunch of family members. Things are starting to look a lot more grim as time passes by…

There's something I'm not understanding here: both you and the GP are commenting on a food shortage and Sugar is the food that you both mention as being hard to come by. If there is a food shortage shouldn't sugar be the last food you would care about obtaining? Or are basic necessities (rice, etc) readily available and it's only luxuries like sugar that are hard to find?

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#25

Post by pipio21 »

As a Spanish native speaker who knows Venezuela pretty well I find disturbing to hear you could live well in Venezuela with USD100.

First, unless you are a complete sociopath, just seeing so many people suffering to just buy food(or medicines) is a traumatic experience.

For a doctor to operate you, you need to bring the medicines first!!

Next, you will risking your life in every corner. In some South American countries life is worth nothing, but in Venezuela it is another level. If you are an outsider you have to be very careful. Venezuelan people have gotten used to it and they know subconsciously what not to do, while a European or (North)American can make mistakes easily, and they have too much money.

When Venezuelan people find a robber, they will lynch him, police will come so people do not kill him.

The country is near a civil war. Hugo Chavez created a populist law called "Referendum revocatorio" that if the Government did something against the people, the people could remove it from power. The opposition is trying to use this law, but Maduro opposes it.

Of course the people in power do not want to go out of power by any means, specially when in Venezuela every good job position is occupied by pro-Chavez people, they are "more equal than others" and will lose everything if they pass the law.

Venezuela has a big army, and this army is directly supported by Russia, so given that Venezuela oil reserves are the biggest in the world(albeit bad quality) it is very dangerous as lots of other countries could intervene and create a proxy war.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#26

Post by rafaelm »

callalex wrote: post #24
rafaelm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm living in Barquisimeto and between me and my wife we are making around $160 per month. We are scraping by. Plus we've got a 3 month old baby, who luckily is exclusively breastfeeding, because baby formula is practically non-existent. We had to pool about $60 to buy a sack of sugar in the black market and divide it among a bunch of family members. Things are starting to look a lot more grim as time passes by…

There's something I'm not understanding here: both you and the GP are commenting on a food shortage and Sugar is the food that you both mention as being hard to come by. If there is a food shortage shouldn't sugar be the last food you would care about obtaining? Or are basic necessities (rice, etc) readily available and it's only luxuries like sugar that are hard to find?

All the basics are hard to come by: rice, flour, milk, toiletries,etc. I'm just commenting about sugar because GP commented on it. I assume because it's one of the items that has just disapeared lately.

I'm actually not really worried about sugar because I barely consume it. We bought the sack of sugar because a cousin of mine used to make ends meet with a small cupcake business she used to make for parties,etc. and now she can't find flour or sugar.

I wrote a comment about this before: if you have enough money you can go out and eat lobster and whatever fancy food you want. The things that are almost impossible to find are basic things most people need to survive like flour, milk, toiletries, medicine,etc.

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#27

Post by glibgil »

callalex wrote: post #24
rafaelm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm living in Barquisimeto and between me and my wife we are making around $160 per month. We are scraping by. Plus we've got a 3 month old baby, who luckily is exclusively breastfeeding, because baby formula is practically non-existent. We had to pool about $60 to buy a sack of sugar in the black market and divide it among a bunch of family members. Things are starting to look a lot more grim as time passes by…

There's something I'm not understanding here: both you and the GP are commenting on a food shortage and Sugar is the food that you both mention as being hard to come by. If there is a food shortage shouldn't sugar be the last food you would care about obtaining? Or are basic necessities (rice, etc) readily available and it's only luxuries like sugar that are hard to find?

If you've never been poor then you won't understand that coffee and tea (therefore sugar) are not luxuries, but a way to keep your sanity. The alternative is taking to the streets

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#28

Post by srgseg »

It's staggering how quickly things can change. In 2014, Venezuelans were some of the happiest people in the world, and according to Pew happier than the average American [1]

Now it easily tops the Bloomberg misery index for the second year in a row [2]

[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/10/30/people-in-emerging-marke...

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-04/these-are-...

Re: I Lived Like a Baller for a Month in Venezuela on Just £75 (2015)

#29

Post by tim333 »

astronautjones wrote: post #19
rwallace wrote: post #18

That was last year when the crisis could still be attributed to incompetence, mismanagement. The situation has changed considerably since then. I'm going to call it now: the Venezuela crisis is not incompetence after all. It's the first steps of a highly competent plan to do what several other communist governments did last century: bring about the death of a large percentage of the country's population. I don't ligh…

They don't have a communist government.

Although they are probably heading that way if Maduro can get away with it. I still think the food shortages are incompetence rather than design though.
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