Hi guys ! in the previous post I Explain the origin of how we came to this deep crisis in Venezuela,in this post I would like to explain / tell you about the problems that Venezuelans have to deal with every day. And how something as basic as going to get cash at ATM can be a problem.
I would like to start the post with some comments left by my friend @cryptick:
@cryptick explained very accurately what is happening, and he says that from the United States he reads these stories and finds it hard to believe them, but it is something that happens every day, that all Venezuelans live and some affect them more than others.
And if you are wondering why withdrawing cash is a problem, it is because due to inflation our old higher denomination ticket is now the one with the smallest denomination; As a solution, the government created a new monetary cone with greater value.
But the amount of new banknotes put into circulation is not enough to supply the Venezuelan population, making cash money scarce. Some Venezuelans take advantage of the fact that cash is scarce and sell it at 20%, taking a profit at the expense of the crisis that Venezuela is going through.
It happened to me that two days ago that I wanted to cut my hair and I only took with me 10,000 BsF (Because this was what it was worth two weeks ago). When I arrived at the hairdresser, they told me that the haircut had already been increased to 20,000 BsF (the double) so I needed to get cash to cut my hair. I proceeded to go to an ATM of the bank I used and when i arrived to the ATM they were empty and they had no money, so I had to borrow money from a familiar and I could not cut my hair that day.
Which brings us to the next point: The Instability of prices
In Venezuela it is impossible to save, since our currency is losing and losing value and if you try to save, what you could buy before with 100 thousand bolivars in a month will cost you 300 thousand bolivars and you end up losing money.
It happened to me that I was saving money to buy some new shoes and they had a value of 350 thousand bolivars.
I spent two weeks collecting the money and when I went to buy it they had already increase to 500 thousand bolivars, an increase of 40% in just two weeks.
In a shoe you do not see the importance of this; but when it comes to investing is where we see the problem:
It happened to a friend who owns a liquor store that he invested in 100 boxes of beers and while he was selling them the price kept going up (to "not lose money" he also increased the sale price), but at the end of
selling 100 boxes of beer was not enough to be able to buy 100 more, since the price had increased more than he had to invest with everything and profits.
The only way to save is to buy dollars or some other foreign currency.
While the prices continue rising and rising the minimum monthly salary remains very low, now in 450 thousand bolivars, is equivalent to only 10.65 $
This obviously is not enough to cover the monthly expenses, leading Venezuelans to look for alternative ways to get money, in ways not so beneficial for the country:
- Reselling of foods at higher prices.
- Sale of cash.
- Contraband gasoline.
- Some well-known people "bachaqueras" dedicate themselves to making long queues in supermarkets to buy the staple products at a regulated price and then resell them at high prices to people who can not make these long lines.
- When money began to be scarce and it was almost impossible to get cash at ATM, some people saw "opportunity" in this and started to sell the money in cash charging 20% commission.
3)** Contraband gasoline **
In Venezuela the cheapest gasoline in the world is sold, with a price of 0.10 $ per liter.
Many people in the border states spend gas in their cars and take them to Colombia / Brazil and sell them up to $ 1, $ 2 per liter; GENERATING MANY PROFITS, but hurting the country
This contraband gasoline generates large queues at gas stations, causing cars to wait 3, 4 hours to fill their fuel tank.
And not only this. There is also a GREAT CRISIS in Venezuelan hospitals. The Venezuelan health system has collapsed in recent years. After the bad management of the government:
There is a shortage of medicines, lack of Medical-Surgical supplies. Sometimes even the water is missing!
Hospital centers have become a door to death and not to life, none has the minimum conditions to ensure the lives of citizens.
Patients in public hospitals must buy their own supplies for surgeries, in the hospital they ask you to take everything: operating gown, syringes, gloves, scalpel, anesthesia, EVERYTHING. Being things that the hospital should already have.
I hope it helped you understand the situation we are going through in Venezuela, if you want me to delve into a specific topic let me know in the comments and I will answer them!
What do the common people think should be done to fix the situation? Or, are they too busy trying to get enough to live on to think about that?
People respond by buying dollars, or buying objects that in the future can increase their value.
That, speaking of people with high incomes, owners of some company
the people of middle / lower class really live hard trying to get trough the month
So they are basically all scalpers, but then with food instead of luxury products.
That's really sad.
It really is difficult to answer, some do not have the education to understand how it could be arranged, others do not have the time. I'm really not afraid to answer that question, I think the main thing would be to change the government and the people involved in it, for a better management beneficial to the people. Another solution that comes to my mind would dollarize the currency, as Ecuador did.
Maduro the leader of the country is the world’s newest dictator. The people were behind his very charismatic predecessor Chavez and have supported him for a while. It has been proven many times that communism does not work, price controls do not work and stealing from the rich to give to the poor only works until you run out of rich people. Well, now they are reaping what they sowed.
When you are in a hole the first thing you need to do is to stop digging; however when a corrupt politicians control the country and have done many bad things they cannot relinquish power without facing potential prosecution; this means they do everything to stay in power and they are both smart, devious and corrupt. They have surrounded themselves with people who support them. They have out maneuvered the competition many times all while blaming the problems on outsiders. Everyone that opposes them has been eliminated from power.
Ironically, the USA does not need to do much, as laws of economics will naturally cause certain things to happen. We know that it does not matter if you believe in gravity, when you step in a hole gravity still sorta sucks you down. Well, economically, manipulating prices will lead to shortages and non-optimal economic distribution. You have children literally starving while a country subsides, the price of Gasoline at incredibly low prices (<$0.10 USD a gallon?).
Government planners are not smarter than the free market. Ultimately, economics has determined the free market is the best way to decide use of goods, but this does not please the powers that be. They can fight with gravity for a long as they want, it will not change anything.
What is the best thing that could happen? The government needs to get rid of all price controls and get out of the way. The free market will solve the problems. Some have predicted this would only happen with a government default or change in government and they may be right. International agencies -if permitted- would supply some interim humanitarian assistance, but this has not been accepted because of pride. Venezuela would begin to bounce back immediately. It took years to get here, so it will take year to get out; but they have the people, resources and ability to pull out quickly. While Veneuzula’s communism road started about 20 years ago, it really only got bad about 2 years ago. Unfortunately, the changes that are needed may not be real likely to happen. We see where Cuba is today after 50+ years of communism. Venezuela is striving to become like Cuba and they are succeeding. I think Cambodia may be a more realistic model for Venezuela. Cambodia a country that never starved, tried communism and then killed one quarter of the population. It got really bad. Venezuela has a long militant history so war is not out of the question either. Neighboring Columbia just came out of a 20 year fight with rebels.
In fact, if you just look at the murder rate in Venezuela (~30,000 people a year) is double (maybe three times) what it should be (compared to historical or similar countries). This means the crisis is killing 15,000 people a year or 42 a day. The murder rate in Venezuela is about 10 times that of the USA. Yeah, it is bad. Really sad to see.
I hate to see people suffer, but people also reap what they sew. America has fetish with communism and so many people –in Hollywood and elsewhere- think it is cool. Communism is not cool. It hurts people. It doesn’t work. Never has. Never will. But that does not mean people won’t keep trying to play God rather than serve God. And that just does not work so well for countries as history has shown time and time again.
Glad to see you are getting some readership and money on these posts. No doubt you and people in your country need it! Maybe you can introduce steemit to all your friends in school.
On second thoughts, that question (fixing the situation) is perhaps too dangerous to answer. Firstly stay safe. Maybe you can talk more about how people are responding as the local currency is failing. What are they trading instead?
The US Government has a consumer price index where they track the price of a market basket of goods. They send people to the grocery store and write down the price for each item. They also take care to adjust this carefully to account for changes in size, quality and more. I think it would be interesting for you to choose items you can get and do a similar thing. You can then update the list each month, and make comments about how it has changed. This is actually something very useful to economists, but the government of Venezuela has stopped publishing that information long ago. Here is a simple example.
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/pricebasket.html
If you research consumer price index there is lots of information on how to do this. I do not think it needs to be as complicated as the US government. I think small and simple is good. To make this interesting, you can tell us how it changes from month to month, what it takes to get the items, how your choices differ, where you bought the items ect.
Adding a picture to the post (of the items at home) and commenting on how they changes, what the price was several years ago and more help us to better understand the changes as well.
Could you take us grocery shopping for breakfast? As an American breakfast would be 2 eggs, bacon, a cup of coffee, a banana, and slice of toast? Can you get these items? How much do each of them cost? Where do you have to go to get them? How many choices do you have in stock? Are you buying eggs from a farmer in street, in a grocery store in a carton? how long do you have to wait in line? What type of bread choices so you have? (bread, muffin, donut, or similar pastry). Here is America my local Wal-mart had 50 types of bread products! From what I read bread is hard to find, as wheat imports are limited and local bakeries have been subject to government intervention.
Sounds terrible there. Not sure what can be done to correct the situation other than to use a different currency... (maybe SBD for instance... :) )
Yes, that's what i thought, change the currency could be a very good solution.
To fully dollarize the Venezuelan economy could definitely achieve a total breakdown of the expectations of future devaluations of the bolivar, eliminate distrust and reduce inflation to a single digit in the medium term, improving the quality of life of Venezuelans. When talking about full dollarization, the process is described in which the dollar is converted into national currency of legal tender, substituting the local currency of the country that adopts it.
Why "dollarize" with another currency built on inflation (USD)? Why not use future tech.. IE BTC/STEEM/ETH something along these lines. Unless you are using dollarize to mean any alternative to the national currency.
normal inflation isn't really the problem these people have. The inflation of the USD is peanuts in comparison with the national currency.
Also not everyone has the tools to acces crypto currencies. If basic food is already expensive, then how do you expect them to buy all of the computer equipment needed?
Cheap cellphones are all that would be necessary. They don't need to mine crypto currency to use it to stabilize their economy.
If maybe changing to a money system like the btc would be a better solution and we could be the leaders in that.
But Venezuela does not have the technological and educational capacity for that. Yes, an investment would be ideal, but we are very badly managed by the current government to expect that from them.
I've heard stories that the government imprisons people for mining bitcoins, they see it as something ilegal. So how could they even consider making it their main currency? It's something difficult
Dollarization has a long history. Many countries Cambodia and El Salvadore have heavily dollarized currencies. Merchants will take whatever money you give them and just give you the change back as best they can. All people don't have the technology for cryptocurrency yet. Why it has not caught on better I don't know, although Venezuela had modern cell phones three years ago.
Well then sounds like you DO have the technology for cryptocurrency! What you lack is education as to its usefulness! For that the people of your country are dependent on those such as yourself!
Venezuela was really modern and advanced a few years ago. Phones -imported form abroad are realatively expensive and now most money goes to food. That said those with money can get stuff imported, it is just most people without jobs that can be done online or sell internationally don't have access to foreign cash. That said, phone operating systems change quickly so not all those phones support it. Phone theft in the streets is a problem.
Hi, I live in Venezuela and I see this era as a witness and actor. I have read this posts and I am happy to see countrymans clear in the situation we live, and I am happier to see people from around the world learning about this crazy history story. The financial situation here is bad for many (people earning in BSF - bolivares fuertes) buecause the inflation(I calle it devaluation better) is huge. an example 12 months ago the exchange rate Bsf/us$ was 1600:1 today nov 7, 2017 is 48400:1 , in the same period the minimun wage was around Bsf 27.000 today Bsf 450.000. Just calculate bsf7us4 increase vs minimun wage increase. And it a ¨good¨ situation for a few, those who understand the magic formula is earn in us$ and expend in Bsf, How? In my particular case crytocurrencies, freelance online jobs and steemit are a good option, and they work for me and my family.
The products available here in Bsf are far too expensive for many, 1 kg of meat is between Bsf 60k and 120k (minimun wage is bsf 450k)...but if you exchange the value in us$ is really cheap... 1kg of meat is around us$1,2 .
Anyway this was only to show my vission about Venezuelan prices...but the solution? I think the solution is as complex as the problem, curruption at all leves, no punishment, no production, external debt enormous (some say minimun us$150 billion,some say it could be twice that)...
My prediction? this country is going straight yo the abbyss, it is going to be a hard road but it is the only way to get out of this, and I not talking about election or politics, I am talking about economics, debts and starving people....I love this country and I am sure we will stand up stronger but not now, we are still learning in the hard way. Thank you for reading and support us here, every dime counts for us here, belive me. God bless us all
One of the issue with this is that there's very few people who want to sell Bitcoin for bolivar. As the purchasing power of the bolivar goes further down this situation is exacerbated.
In this case it's up to merchants actually creating an economy for the alternative driven by it's stability over that of the "normal" national currency. There will always be the option of conversion, that is normal and should be expected. In the situation of a rapidly devaluating currency the relative stability of Bitcoin can be an asset to it's use of a currency ( but it is depreciating so this is why my suggestion of SBD with it's peg can be of a further increased utility). The stability of crypto over rapidly inflating national currencies is a strength for pricing of goods as 1 SBD will hold its value much longer then a Venesuelan bolivar.
Everyone likes to eat! If you go to one of the main streets in Venezuela where there are restaurants how has it changed in the last 5 years. How many restaurants went out of business? How many had to change their menus? Do they print new menus, cross of the prices on a sticker, list the price in dollars or have the price on a chalk board? How do they deal with the prices changing every few days? How busy are the restaurants? Do more people eat at home now?
Thanks to the great @sircork who resteemed your post I was able to see it.
I'll try to get in touch with you later this week. Can I get in contact with you on the steemit chat or pal discord?
Take care my friend.
Thanks you both for the support guys. @sircork @teamsteem
@teamsteem you can find me on discord channel!
Thanks you for passing by, i hope you have a good week
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Ultimately, while there are really bad financial problems(which i hope go away as fast as possible), the root cause is a political one. So any true solution will have to be political.
I think we past the political solution now, the politicians , all, are looking for their own interests..but the economy is exact and the numbers show Venezuela is unable to pay its debts in the coming months, this will take it to default and all importations will be halted. Guess what? Almost 90% of products here come from abroad, just imagine no importation and no money...political solution? I am not so sure....
Wow. So sad. Thank you for sharing and helping to explain just how bad the situation is in Venezuela :(
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Thank you again for your reports. This is important. But more importantly- keep you and yours safe. Prepare as much as possible. Always.