Pomona Professor on Chavez's Failed Proposals

Here's Pomona Professor Miguel Tinker-Salas talking on The News Hours with Jim Lehrer. He's the author of Hugo Chavez and the Decline of an Exceptional Social Democracy. (The video is linked up.)

Professor Tinker-Salas makes the case that this vote was really about economic issues and how the social programs didn't go far enough. The other, Professor Moises Naim, talks about how those very programs have been very ineffective and how Chavez isn't so much a Socialist, but a Putin-like crook.

In principle, I don't share Professor Tinker-Salas's view that the social programs will ever really achieve anything other than political support in the short-term. Subsidies just aren't effective at solving serious social programs. Sure, gasoline is 7 cents a gallon and food and medical services are subsidizes, but Chavez isn't building an ownership society in which people, through their taxes, are vested in the society. He's making the same errors that the Saudis and others with oil have been making -- trying to buy everyone off to maintain power. He's hoping that if he pays for everything in the society that he can sure up support. But eventually, the oil will dry out and when it does, I fear for the Venezuelans. Of course, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that the social programs can create the democracy that Venezuela needs.