Socialists LOVE Chicken Feet!

After all, that’s what their utopia has come to (emphasis added):

Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

President Hugo Chavez’s administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price.

Major private supermarkets suspended sales of beef earlier this week after one chain was shut down for 48 hours for pricing meat above government-set levels, but an agreement reached with the government on Wednesday night promises to return meat to empty refrigerator shelves.

Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.

Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the last four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

Now, perhaps the Venezuela apologists will come out of the woodwork again. This is all America’s fault! Chavez would have his paradise working properly with his billions of dollars in oil money if we would just stop criticizing him!

But for those of us who understand basic economics and human nature, this is the expected result, and the one that we have been predicting. The socialists told us it wouldn’t happen. Shall we serve their crow in a soup, or should we do it southern style, deep-fried?

Hat Tip: Q and O