Socialist Food Shortages
- Communists can't even make toilet paper or grow food. But they stay in power by bribing the mouth-breathing voters with endless "free" crap stolen from other people.
And so it begins... Old Soviet-style bread lines at Venezuela mercados, stretch around the block
From Reuters via CNBC, "No flour? No fish? Venezuela's chefs get creative amid shortages":
A sushi bar in Caracas makes tempura with ground oats and cornstarch to replace increasingly scarce wheat flour.
A Spanish restaurant, seeking to keep its fare affordable, revamps its paella recipe by removing exorbitantly priced prawns.
Restaurateurs selling "arepas" - the grilled corn pancakes that are a staple across the country - make them a bit smaller to stretch their unsteady supplies of corn flour.
A Spanish restaurant, seeking to keep its fare affordable, revamps its paella recipe by removing exorbitantly priced prawns.
Restaurateurs selling "arepas" - the grilled corn pancakes that are a staple across the country - make them a bit smaller to stretch their unsteady supplies of corn flour.
Venezuelan diners continue to eat well despite soaring inflation (56%) and chronic food shortages, largely thanks to Herculean efforts by chefs to obtain prized foodstuffs and juggle menus to slow the rising prices.
Months old, maggot-infested wheat and corn is in many cases, all that's left
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| Venezuelan Market Socialists say, "Chew slowly and make the food last longer." Capitalists say, "Chow down and come back for thirds." |
Continuing:
In working-class canteens and high-end bistros, staff say finding basics such as flour, milk or chicken - all scarce, in large part, because of currency and price controls - requires making repeated trips to markets and harassing providers.
"I haven't been able to buy wheat flour or corn flour for more than a month. I'm working with what I had last year," said Eduardo Castaneda, 45, owner of La Guayaba Verde, or The Green Guava, in Caracas, which offers a modern spin on traditional Venezuelan food. (Emphasis added.)
Venezuela's price controls require staple goods be sold at fixed rates that are at times below production cost, which often leaves them scarce because of the reduced incentive for companies to make or import them.
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| Toilet paper, rice and coffee have long been missing from stores, as the Venezuelan President blames a CIA plot instead of Communism. |
BLACK MARKET PORK
Chavez's efforts to make food affordable have come at a price: In times of shortage, "unethical" (CNBC's word) entrepreneurs buy discount groceries and resell them on the black market. Translation - That is called a FREE market.
Authorities last month detained four people at the Budare del Este restaurant in the chic but gaudy Caracas neighborhood of Las Mercedes on charges of illegally buying subsidized food, including nearly a tonne of pork and half a tonne of chicken.
"Those products are meant to meet the needs of Venezuelan families, not to line the pockets of scoundrels," wrote the Communist Maduro in a series of incensed tweets announcing the operation.
Bakers often seek to protect themselves from wheat flour shortages by building up stocks to meet holiday demand for breads and cakes. If they get inspected, however, they risk accusations of hoarding.
The owner of the lounge-bar restaurant said the combination of product shortages and potential legal pitfalls leaves him feeling like "a bullfighter in the ring waiting to see which beast I'm going to face.
"You wake up every morning and within around 45 minutes you realize some product has gone scarce, and you'll spend the rest of the day figuring out what to do."
LR PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you wish to avoid consumption of maggot-infested food here in the U.S., under Obama's increasingly Venezuela-style socialist state, you may want to check out this website: "Preppers Food Storage Check List" survivalistblog.net.
Thanks to the Libertarian Republican for a heads up on this story.
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| Food lines in Socialist Venezuela |
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