Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Hunger, crazy inflation, a dictator seizing power:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/americas/ ... index.html

I'm kinda glad, you know? It definitely takes the spotlight off us a bit.

I used it as an opportunity to better explain why I bother to grow potatoes to my news-junkie mother.

Some alternative perspectives on the situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk1qlKu ... ture=share

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analys ... -0004.html

S_W: Marxist backing Chavez/Maduro are really only playing the worn out boogeyman part that everyone from The Economist to Alex Jones loves to cast them in. If you look at various social indicators Venezuela does not stand out, except when it does so in a bad way. The country has the worlds largest oil reserves, and at the price of a massive personality cult and extreme violence levels it manages to keep abreast with Peru*. In actual fact, most Latin American countries seem to be moving in the same direction, regardless of leftism or rightism** But some people won't give up the dream, and C/M give them all the revolutionary glory their hearts could desire.

* https://www.google.se/publicdata/explor ... &ind=false

** https://www.google.se/publicdata/explor ... &ind=false

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:35 pm

I used it as an opportunity to better explain why I bother to grow potatoes to my news-junkie mother.

This reminds me of my stay in Russia after Perestroika. Govt paychecks stopped coming in. Stores got really unreliable. Then the old ladies mobilized everyone to get the potatoes in every green belt around the apartments I was staying in. It was the old ones who saw the bad times of ww2 and after that taught the youngsters this "skill". You made me feel like taking a few of my dried up sprouted russets and Yukon golds out to the backyard...to the HOA dirt that gets free water . It takes some time to get the whole thing going. I guess that is why a few weeks of grain is a smart hedge to get you across to the first potato harvest. Unless you already have it going like yer doin.

My response to Venezuela is the typical American "that is terrible" then I shut it off and sit down to eat dinner. I knew a lot of Venezuelan 1%ers back in the 90s. They complained Chavez had ruined their country. Certainly he ruined things for them. I guess it is coming full circle. Yuck. Pendulum swings too far for both the rich and poor.