Would you like to know more about:

How your savings rate compares to the national average?learn more

Living in America is GOOD!

I just returned from a long vacation visiting family members who live in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed every minute of it, but I've got to say it is a fine thing to live in America where we take a lot of things for granted that we simply ought to appreciate more than we do.

Beautiful Country:

As you probably know, Venezuela lies at the eastern shoulder of South America with its major coastline lying on an east/west axis facing the United States across the considerable width of the Caribbean Sea. It's a very beautiful country with tall mountains (the Andes), fertile plains (the Llanos), broad rivers (the Orinoco being the major one), rain forests, and lovely coastline beaches. Just off shore from Puerto La Cruz, where I spent my time, there are a fair number of small dry islands within a thirty minute boat ride that have great beaches and good snorkeling.

Imagine seventy five degree days, sunshine every day, ten knot breezes during the afternoon and evening, seventy degree nights sleeping under only a sheet; and all of this in January and February when it's freezing at home!

Fine People:

I don't speak Spanish, but both my daughter and son-in-law do, so I had my own panel of skilled interpreters when I was out and about. Because I don't speak Spanish, I didn't learn to know a lot of Venezuelans, but those I did become a bit acquainted with are fine people with a ready sense of humor. In general, Venezuelans are probably more "laid back" than most Americans, and for certain they do like a good party!

Carnival time in late February is four days or so of celebration during which goods and services can be hard to come by because everyone is off somewhere having a good time. Small shops will probably be closed, and don't even consider trying to contact a repairman because he won't be answering his phone.

Venezuelans do not, of course, celebrate the fourth of July so they blow off fireworks on New Years Eve, and quite a show it is! Beginning at the stroke of midnight the sky over the city filled with aerial bombs exploding, rockets rising and exploding into sparkling blooms of red, green, gold, and white. AND, it goes on, and on, and on. It looked and sounded a lot like World War Three! I think it was finally quiet enough for me to go to sleep about 3:30 in the morning-or maybe it was just that I was so pooped I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and no longer heard the sounds.

Venezuelans may be fine people who enjoy humor and parties, but they don't drive cars all that well. You see lots of cars with dents, scrapes, broken lights, and any twenty minute drive will show you why. The drivers seem to feel fine about moving into line ahead of you if the bumper of their car is at least three feet ahead of yours. Traffic laws and rules of the road seem to be regarded by drivers as suggestions to be considered and then accepted or rejected-mostly rejected. My guess is that any Venezuelan starting an automobile trip in California would be arrested within the first fifteen miles. I mean, they drive like there's no tomorrow!

The good news for anyone driving a car or boat in Venezuela is that gasoline is only nine cents a gallon. Can you believe it? Nine cents a gallon is far and away the least expensive fuel cost in the entire world.

Once I was a Multimillionaire:

It's true. At one time I had three million, nine hundred thousand; which made me a multimillionaire. That's the good news. The bad news is that it wasn't in American dollars.

The Venezuelan currency is the Bolivar (the B), named after Simon Bolivar who liberated a huge area of South America from Spanish rule a couple of hundred years ago, and his rather dapper image graces the currency. The official exchange rate is 2,100 Bs to one dollar, but the currency hasn't been devalued in about twelve years or so resulting in an unofficial exchange rate of 3,900 Bs to the dollar. So when I exchanged one thousand dollars for Bs, I had a wad of bills big enough to choke the average great white shark. Americans ought to be thankful that our currency is stable.

Another worrisome factor about the Venezuelan economy is that the inflation rate is about eighteen percent which doesn't compare favorably to the three and half percent that represents the long term average inflation rate in the American economy. The fact that inflation in our country is low and fairly well controlled is another thing for which we should be very grateful but often take for granted.

Economy and Infrastructure:

I have really enjoyed visiting Venezuela for some weeks each of the last four years and I'll miss it. My family won't be living there any longer and I'll have no compelling reason to go there. Even though I loved my visits, I have to say that things don't always work that well in Venezuela.

The supply infrastructure isn't reliable so you often can't find what you need. You want to bake chocolate chip cookies for the kids? Well you can't get chocolate chips at all, and you may or may not find sugar when you shop for it. You can't always find coffee, or milk, or cuts of meat either. There is a limited selection of grocery store items (which may not be all that bad, come to think of it) compared to the paralyzing, mind numbing number of choices you have on American grocery shelves.

Getting work of virtually any sort done can become a frustrating exercise of many telephone calls and something less than skilled workmanship. With respect to machinery, the mantra works out to be something like, "we can get it to run, but we can't fix it." The result is repair work often needs to be redone a number of times before things work properly. You might, for example, take your vehicle in for one problem, get that resolved-or not-but then when you pick the car up it has a new problem it didn't have when you took it in for the first problem. Yeah, I know it's a little convoluted and confusing, but that exact sequence has happened several times to my daughter.

Roads and bridges aren't very well maintained and take a long time to get repaired. Telephone service can fail fairly frequently, the mails aren't reliable, and distribution networks break down, and so it goes.

All this doesn't necessarily detract from a super vacation experience, and I do recommend Venezuela as a vacation destination, but it might be hard to live with 24-7-365.

Venezuela's Future:

If things in Venezuela don't work so well now, they'll work less well in the future.

What's happening is that the President of the country, Hugo Chavez, seems to be working hard at centralizing nearly all power in his own hands. His openly avowed stance can be paraphrased as follows. This country is going down a path I have chosen and anyone who doesn't like it can leave. The sad prospect is that a fair number of people will take him at his word and leave Venezuela, and they will likely be those with education and skills the country needs; the people who know how to keep the infrastructure operating, the people who know how administer enterprises to get things accomplished.

For example, President Chavez is in the process of limiting imports of all kinds (which is a problem since Venezuela imports roughly 75% of the food consumed) and pressuring producers to increase output while at the same time controlling prices at such a low level that producers lose money. Even I know that can't work for long. But then Mr. Chavez' training as a paratrooper may not have prepared him very well in terms of understanding how economics work.

A government can try to address such problems by nationalizing everything in sight (which it seems President Chavez in the midst of doing) and forming collectives (which he isn't doing yet) for producing whatever needs to be grown, or made, or distributed so that virtually everyone ends up working for the State. That way at least producers don't have to worry about losing their own money. However, history shows nationalizing industry doesn't work. It didn't work in England, didn't work in the USSR, and doesn't work in Cuba. Collectivization for production doesn't work either because there's little or no incentive to be efficient, creative, or productive.

What works best is for every person, family, or group of individuals to have the freedom-within reasonable limits-to try and make their lives better. Energy, creativity, industry and effort are then freed so citizens can find their own pathway toward reaching their own personal and family goals, and that ends up benefiting all of us. That's what America is all about.

Heaven knows everything isn't perfect with this country either, but there's a lot about it that's very, very good. Be glad you're an American. I am, and while I love Venezuela, I'm fine with not living there permanently.

arley