In the country with the richest oil reserves in the world, people can't even afford toilet paper. This is not a fantasy, but a real thing that happened in the South American country of Venezuela.
Venezuela has a land area of 916,400 square kilometers, which is about seven and a half Fujian, with a total population of 32.22 million, about 10 million less than Fujian.
Venezuela is a good place to enjoy food in terms of geographical location and resource reserves. Geographically, the north is the Caribbean Sea, whether it is for seafood or import and export goods are very convenient, in terms of resources, Venezuela has proven oil reserves of about 302.8 billion barrels, ranking first in the world.
Such a country could have lived a good life like a tyrant in the Middle East lying down, but in fact, Venezuela** has long been at the top of the global suffering index rankings, and it also owes a lot of foreign debt that cannot be repaid.
Of Venezuela's many creditors, China is arguably the largest. Venezuela owed China $60 billion at its peak, and Venezuela, which could not afford to pay it back, once wanted to use the islands to pay off its debts. In 2019, the unemployment rate in Venezuela was as high as 35%, 80% of people could only eat one meal a day, and the poverty rate was as high as 94%, and many people could only rummage through the trash can for food.
Venezuela** has stopped publishing GDP data since February 2016, and in 2018, according to IMF estimatesInflation in Venezuela is as high as 10 million, and the minimum monthly salary in Venezuela at this time is 1 million sovereign bolívars, and the ** of a roll of toilet paper costs 2.6 million bolívars, which is equivalent to people working hard for a year and can't even buy 6 rolls of toilet paper.
Today, although the minimum monthly wage in Venezuela has been raised to 13 million bolívars, this is equivalent to less than 26 yuan. I didn't inquire about the latest ** about Venezuelan toilet paper, if you have friends who know, you can tell me in the comments, I thank you in advance.
In addition, Venezuela still has millions of children out of school, and even their ** was once caught in a drug trafficking scandal, so why did Venezuela, a country with a lot of resources, fall into such a situation?
December 1922,Venezuela has discovered super-large oil fields, and everyone knows that oil is a good thing. But at that time, Venezuela, like the later Middle Eastern countries, found wealth, but had no ability to exploit it.
At this time, Western oil companies naturally came on the scene to help Venezuela extract oil, and within a few years, Venezuela became one of the world's largest oil exporters, but at this time, a large amount of oil profits were earned by foreign companies, and Venezuela and its people did not get much benefitIt was not until 1943 that Venezuela passed the Hydrocarbon Law, which stipulated that foreign companies could not make more profits from oil than they paid to Venezuela, which meant that Venezuela would account for at least half of the profits from oil extraction.
This move helped Venezuela's GDP per capita to leap to the fourth highest level in the world in 1950, giving Venezuelans a literally good life. But by 1973, that had changed. At that time, there was a person named Perez in the Venezuelan Democratic Action Party who wanted to run for **, but he had no supporters, in order to be addicted, he wrote a blank check, and he said to the businessman, you support me, and in the future, there will be projects and projects for you to do. For the populace, he promised a lot of benefits.
For Perez, if he is not selected, everything will be pulled down, and if he is selected, it will be generous to the country, and he does not have to pay for it himself. At that time, the first oil crisis broke out in 1973, and the international oil price soared from less than $3 to $13 per barrel, and Venezuela's income also soared.
Perez's promises to businessmen and the people have the capital to fulfill, and he also announced the "Greater Venezuela" plan, ready to vigorously promote the construction of infrastructure in Venezuela, and at the same time increase investment in public health and education.
But to achieve all this, a budget of up to $53 billion is needed, which is almost the same as France's military spending for the whole of 2022, so this money is a large amount not to mention at the time, but also now, so how can Perez raise such a large amount of money?
Perez's solution is to fight local tyrants, who is the richest in Venezuela? It must have been those foreign oil companies, so from 1976, Peres forced the nationalization of oil, and it only took 11100 million US dollars, 19 foreign oil companies were acquired, and the Venezuelan oil company, which was the third largest in the world at that time, was formed.
This behavior directly led to the flight of a large number of foreign capital, although at this time Venezuela has been living a good life on oil for decades, but their oil technology is basically relying on foreign companies, and the wealth obtained from selling oil is used for welfare, simply like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates today, the development of high-tech or industry.
This leads to the fact that although Venezuela has unlimited scenery on the surface, its actual foundation is not solid, and they can live a good life by oil, but if that's all, Venezuelans are at most living a tighter life when oil is ***, but when Peres fulfilled his promise of welfare, he not only used the ** budget in exchange for selling oil, but also borrowed a large amount of foreign debt.
The takeaway brother paid off his debts and earned 1.02 million in three years
In this way, Venezuela's national fortunes are tightly tied to oil, and as long as oil collapses, their good days will come to an end.
In 1979, Venezuela had a foreign debt of more than $20 billion. This year, although the price of oil rose sharply to $40 per barrel again due to the second oil crisis. The ensuing global recession, which plummeted Venezuela's oil exports by 30 percent, combined with a 20 percent increase in Federal Reserve interest rates in 1981, led to a near-collapse of the Venezuelan economy.
At this time, Luis, then the Venezuelan ** Luis, came to the bottom of the United Nations bureaucrats and capitalists, and put a large amount of national wealth into his own pocket. After that, the Venezuelan economy collapsed until 2008, when international oil prices soared to $150 per barrel, and Venezuela ushered in spring againWelfare to the people did not mean to develop industry and science and technology at all, and as a result, when the international oil price reached $30 in 2013, Venezuela was completely doomed.
Since then, ** can only borrow money to get by, and most people have no other way but to seek more blessings for themselves. Looking at the history of the rise and fall of Venezuela, we can see that they are both successful and oil, and when the oil ** is high, they will have a good life, and once the oil ** dives, the people can't even afford toilet paper. Oil made them rich, but it didn't make them powerful, it made them poor.
Gao Welfare is admittedly partly responsible for all this, but if the root cause is traced back to those shameless politicians who firmly tied the fate of the country to the extremely violent carriage of oil for their own selfish interests, which eventually led to the tragedy of the whole country.