The government of Venezuela is moving to import 50 million rolls of toilet paper as the country is essentially empty of available TP, as reported by the Guardian.
And obviously, human beings being human beings, Venezuelans are buying up the available toilet paper en masse when it IS available in the stores they visit.
Despite Venezuelan President Maduro's claims:
President Nicolás Maduro, who was selected by the dying Hugo Chávez to carry on his "Bolivarian revolution", claims that anti-government forces, including the private sector, are causing the shortages in an effort to destabilise the country.
The government this week announced it also would import 760,000 tonnes of food in addition to the 50m rolls of toilet paper.
Commerce minister Alejandro Fleming blamed the shortage of toilet tissue on "excessive demand" built up as a result of "a media campaign that has been generated to disrupt the country".
Media campaign? I would love to see that commercial.
and the real fact that the current Venezuelan ruling party is no friend of capitalists or the US, it is very likely due to the same factor that causes shortages for other goods in Venezuela and other nations who've instituted similar policies: price controls.
"State-controlled prices – prices that are set below market-clearing price – always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union," said Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University
.
I do think that moderate price controls have their place, especially for extremely inelastic goods/services like healthcare, but definitely not so broad and arbitrary like we see in Venezuela and saw in the Soviet Union.
My take? As income and wealth inequality become more glaring than ever in the US, we as the liberal party need to focus on WAGES, and polices involving trade and taxation, that will alleviate such a terrible disparity and increase the buying power of everyone, so that there's no feeling of a need to make sure toilet paper's price is controlled.
And that's one shitty situation for Venezuelans.