All that's needed for women to close the wage gap with men is to work full time and forgo baby-making. Hey, is it time to celebrate this as a great discovery?

But now there's evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more.

What is so special about Atlanta and Memphis? Why would guys in those cities be especially lagging the women? I can think of one idea. But I would expect it to be true of more than just those two cities.

This phenomenon is specific to smarter women who aren't reproducing. Hey, think this trend could cause problems in the long term? Devolutionary problems?

Here's the slightly deflating caveat: this reverse gender gap, as it's known, applies only to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities. The rest of working women — even those of the same age, but who are married or don't live in a major metropolitan area — are still on the less scenic side of the wage divide.

I know a lot of women who are thoroughly into working part time so they can spend more time raising their kids. This means they make less money and are more reliant on hubbie's paycheck. But they really love their kids and like spending time with them. Yet their lower wages are decried in liberal feminist circles and signs of unfairness.

I think we should celebrate the smart women who so enjoy motherhood that they'd rather take days off from work to help at school or so they can take care of their sick kids or take their kids to museums or zoos or hiking. We should celebrate their having kids and passing along their smarter genes in the first place.

The many decade faster-than-inflation increases in medical spending has at least taken a pause.

Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs and other medical care climbed at a 2.7% annual rate per person in the first half of 2010, the smallest increase since the Bureau of Economic Analysis began tracking medical care in 1959.

The article goes on to say that adjusted for inflation demand actually declined slightly in the first half of 2010. That's a really big deal. Health care demand has grown thru previous recessions due to an aging population, the growth in new expensive treatments, and rising taxpayer subsidy for health care.

US medical spending hit 17.3% of GDP in 2009. It has been forecasted to hit 20% by 2020. But I do not expect the rate of medical spending to grow as much in the next 10 years as it did in the last few decades, Obama's health care plan notwithstanding. Reason: the American people and companies are going to push back against higher costs and against higher taxes.

It is possible that medical spending as a percentage of GDP could grow if GDP shrinks (as I expect it will due to Peak Oil). Certainly the aging of the US population is increasing the demand for medical care. But if medical spending in inflation-adjusted terms has stopped growing then adjusted for age then medical care per person in each age bracket is declining. That's a huge shift. Also, the US population is growing. Medical spending has to grow 1% each year in inflation-adjusted terms just to stay the same per capita.

In response to a recent FuturePundit post on future demand for anesthesiologists many doctors posted in the comments and disparaged the idea that automation was going to cut demand for them. Well, either automation and other advances have to cut costs or the age-adjusted amount of health care delivered will have to start declining.

Former British Prime Minister has published a book about his time in government where, among other things, he addresses his relationship with his long time ally and rival Gordon Brown. Tony sees Gordon as handicapped in dealing with human emotion.

Brown, he writes, lacked the political instinct "at the human gut level" at which Blair excelled. "Political calculation, yes. Political feelings, no. Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero." Looking ahead to Brown's prime ministership, Blair writes baldly: "It was never going to work." Labour lost in 2010 because "it stopped being New Labour".

Of course Tony's long term policy direction (more spending) wasn't sustainable either. But the financial crisis combined with Gordon Brown's failings made a decaying situation worse. Tony thinks New Labour could have won if it had not drifted further to the Left? I'm skeptical. The party's voters wanted more from government. Just like Barack Obama's voters.

"Labour won when it was New Labour," Blair writes in his memoir. "It lost because it stopped being New Labour."

Having the world's reserve currency allows the Democrats in the United States to go further into irresponsibility. The British have less wiggle room for irresponsibility. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in the UK is facing reality as it cuts spending. The British government - like the US government - is living beyond its people's means. But the US government can go longer before being forced back toward fiscal responsibility.

A Muslim taxi cab driver in Great Britain does his part to prevent assimilation and maintain the multi-cultural flavor in Bradford. He uses his taxi driver network of information to track down girls who are trying to escape forced marriages.

On the face of it, Zakir was simply a veteran taxi driver and a popular member of the community in Bradford. Few customers would have realised that behind his bubbly exterior he provided another, much more sinister service. For around £5,000, Zakir would track down women and girls who had run away from home to escape a forced marriage. A bounty hunter, Zakir's mission was to bring them back to their families.

While most locals in the tightly knit south Asian community thought Zakir was merely picking up and dropping off passengers each day, his work provided perfect cover to exploit his contacts with fellow drivers and shopkeepers to hunt down runaway teenagers. According to Zakir, some bounty hunters would also befriend officials in housing departments and in the Department for Work and Pensions to get National Insurance numbers – a strategy confirmed by campaigners against forced marriages.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/29/taxi-driver-bounty-hunter

Forced marriages? Well, 15 year old girls can't make their own decisions. Their parents are the only responsible parties who know which cousin makes the best match. If the British want to enjoy the benefits of multiculturalism then they've got accept forced marriage. Only if the British want to defend their own cultural legacy should they try to stop this sort of thing. Since they aren't trying to stop Muslim cousin marriage I can only conclude they want their own culture to get snuffed out. I'm sure Barack Obama would approve.

In Bradford 75% of Pakistanis are married to first cousins. Hey, they aren't all getting divorced or spending their time getting picked up in bars for one night stands. Nope, marrying their cousins. I bet they are making lots of babies too. Wombs determine the future of the world.

Baroness Deech, a family law professor and crossbencher, will call next week for a “vigorous” public campaign to deter the practice, which is prevalent in Muslim and immigrant communities and on the rise. She will reignite a debate started five years ago when Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, drew attention to the number of disabled babies being born in the town and called for cousin marriage to be stopped.

Baroness Deech is fighting an uphill battle. The British aren't going to wake up tomorrow and try to save their nation from decay.

Fifty-five per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins and in Bradford the figure is 75 per cent. British Pakistanis represent 3 per cent of all births in Britain but one third of children with recessive disorders.

British Members of Parliament who represent Muslims do not want to talk about the problem. Democracy is failing.

Of course it is possible to put many positive spins on the Muslims in Bradford. For example, cousin marriage in Turkey causes many forms of mental retardation in patterns that are useful for scientific researchers looking for genes involved in brain development. So cousin marriage can be used for medical research. Bet you didn't know that.

Plus, you know a lot of Republicans make a big deal of family values right? Well, cousin marriage makes family events warm and cozy. Okay, so some of the people at these events are mentally retarded. But we are supposed to celebrate the differently abled, right? Bradford UK seems like a great site for an International Special Olympics. You read it here first.

Such unions are seen as strong, building as they do on already tight family networks.

"You have an understanding," explains Neila Butt, who married her first cousin, Farooq, nine years ago.

"Family events are really nice because my in-laws and his are related," she says.

"You have the same family history and when you talk about the old times either here or in Pakistan you know who you are talking about. It's just a nicer emotional feel."

British leaders of an earlier era probably would have stomped on this.

Everybody knows everybody else because they are all related in so many ways. What problems could that cause? These are moderate Muslims. Very few of them try to blow up anything.

There are so many ways to see upsides with Muslim immigration into Europe. Look at the culturally enriching Muslim fruit and vegetable vendors in Germany. The demographic future they offer Germany has got to make the Chinese absolutely giddy. With Germany as China's biggest export competitor the high Muslim fertility rate in Germany bodes well for Chinese businesses who currently have to compete against smart aggressive German corporations around the world.

So great news for the Chinese, right? Good for them. O course, you might be thinking "it is bad news for the Germans". But wait. Think this thru. There are a lot more Chinese than Germans. So a development that helps the Chinese helps a lot more people. To anyone who believes that the greatest good for the greatest number is the highest moral belief (at least some strike poses asserting this) this would seem like good news.

Now, you might find the tone of this post just a tad sarcastic. But we live in an absurd time. The dominant liberal ethos of our era has become detached from reality. It has set modern Western nations on course toward ruination. It is hard to find a way to talk about sanely while standing here on the deck of the Titanic with excellent binoculars.

Razib gives Mitt Romney about a 30 point IQ edge over Sarah Palin. If she's at 115 then that'd put him at 145. Anyone got a way to quantify their IQs?

Kingmaker: Why Sarah Palin’s Endorsements Really Are That Big A Deal vs. Romney’s Problem in a Nutshell. I estimate that Mitt Romney’s IQ is around two standard deviations above Sarah Palin’s. That’s democracy.

Mitt's too smart to get elected President. I hear "We are DEVO, D-E-V-O".

Here's what's sad: Sarah, by making babies (excepting the Downs one), raised the average IQ in America. Women as smart as her should make more babies. Her kids are smarter than the average IQ in America.

I suspect there's an optimal IQ range for voters. Too low and they haven't a clue about what's happening. Too high and they tend to embrace impractical complex theories that are untethered from real life. Maybe voters with IQs in the range 120-130 would vote in the best leaders. Or maybe 115-125.

Giving the voting franchise to the masses was obviously a mistake. We need to figure out how to cut back on the voting power of the masses. How to do it?

In the United States the occupations where jobs are growing most rapidly feature below average pay.

While a lack of jobs is arguably the biggest problem facing the labor market, another major concern is the quality of the jobs that are being created. The Figure presents the five fastest growing occupations between 2006 and 2009 and shows that all but one of them pays below the median wage in May 2009 of $15.95 an hour. The two fastest-growing occupations, home health care and food preparation and serving, pay closer to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour than the median wage. A food preparation worker’s typical wage of $8.28 an hour would earn an annual salary of $16,560, based on a typical 2,000-hour work year: That salary is just below the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three. Warehouse stock clerks, another fast-growing occupation, would earn slightly more than $20,000 per year.

Got few skills? Don't get stuck as a food prep cook (been there, done that, btw), Aim high: Warehouse stock clerk. Yes, you could make $20k per year.

The health care industry is booming by sucking in an increasing fraction of GDP.

In addition, three of the five fastest growing occupations – home health aide, medical assistant and registered nurse -- are in the health care industry. While registered nurses earn a median wage of more than $30 an hour, the disproportionate growth in health care jobs points to a lack of robust job growth across the labor market. The most recent jobs data show that every industry – with the exception of health care, education, and the government – has fewer jobs today than before the recession began, strong evidence that demand is weak across the entire economy.

In part due to immigration the younger and less skilled face a brutal job market with very high unemployment.

• Younger and less-educated natives often do the same jobs as immigrants. In the second quarter of 2010, in the occupations employing the most young and less-educated U.S.-born adults, one in five workers was an immigrant.
  
  
• In the second quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate for U.S.-born adults who have not completed high school was 20.8 percent. But even in the second quarter of 2007, before the recession, it was 11.1 percent.
  
  
• Using the broader measure of unemployment that includes those who want to work, but have not looked recently, and those forced to work part-time, the rate for those who haven’t completed high school was 29.3 percent in the second quarter of 2010 and 18.7 percent in the same quarter of 2007.
  
  
• The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers, ages 18 to 29, who have only a high school education was 20 percent in the second quarter of 2010 and 9.6 percent in 2007.
  
  
• The broader measure of unemployment for 18- to 29-year-old U.S.-born workers with only a high school education was 29.2 percent in the second quarter of 2010 and 16.6 percent in 2007.
  

These young unemployed people aren't gaining work experiences that would make them more valuable in the job market. It is short-sighted to let in millions of low skilled illegal aliens to compete with America's youth for jobs.

With 47% of Hispanics dropping out of high school and Hispanics the fastest growing population segment in America the unemployment rates for young workers look set to stay quite high. The American economy has little use for all the low skilled workers crowding into the US labor market. Yet our elites keep trying to bring in still more unqualified workers to drive down wages even lower.

Christopher Hitchens both takes issue with the opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque and and warns of the beliefs of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy.

Well, if even moderate Muslim leaders favor Islamic theocracy then shouldn't we view Islam as incompatible with what America stands for (or at least used to stand for)? Hitchens seems more interested in scoring points than telling us what we really need to do to save our political culture from destruction.

I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf's editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution—to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.

Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results.

The rule of law in this context is the rule of Islamic law. That's religious law, not secular law applied to people of all religions. I am opposed to a foreign religion that has a large body of religious law and a founder that was a military conqueror and political leader. I think anyone who values their freedom should be too.

Liberal commentators defending the Ground Zero Mosque are doing a lot of bonding with each other and reaffirmation of liberal secular faith by attacking the opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque. This issue has helped strengthen their commitment to national suicide. They still have unshaken faith in the universal appeal of liberalism. This delusion spells ruination for the West.

Andrew McCarthy argues that the split between moderate and radical Islamists is about timing and methodology, not eventual outcome.

The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.

Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system. As the former speaker elaborated, sharia embodies principles and punishments that are abhorrent to Western values. Indeed, its foundational premise is anti-American, holding that we are not free people at liberty to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, that people are instead beholden to the Islamic state, which is divinely enjoined to impose Allah’s laws.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns of the West's universalist pretensions.

The West's universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

The funny thing is that universalist pretensions of liberals are both used to justify US foreign interventions (to free people to all join the one liberal way) and to enable the demographic invasion on the United States. Invade the world, invite the world, as Steve Sailer puts it. I see the universalist pretensions of liberals as making the West defenseless. Liberals effectively deny that any conflicting and enduring value systems compete with our own values. They think as long as they stick to their principles it'll all come out well in the end.

Update Why Corboba House for the name of the Ground Zero Mosque? Cordoba is the name of the Spanish city where Muslims established the first Islamic Caliphate in the West. Cordoba is a symbol of Muslim conquest. Make no mistake: Muslims would love to conquer the West. Why should we let them in? Keep them out. They are our enemies.

Update II: Islam's useful idiots in the West are trying to pretty up its image. But the facts about Islam's effects upon human development are sad and tragic. See Fjordman's post Islam and the Decline of Greek Culture: A Critical Look at John Freely's Book “Aladdin’s Lamp”. Also see his post “The House of Wisdom” by Jonathan Lyons: A Brief Review by Fjordman and Fjordman: The Legend of the Middle Ages. Also see his Fjordman Essay: A Critical Look at The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons.

Slate has a funny (not that they meant it to be) subtitle for an article by John Dickerson: Why won't any Republicans condemn the "Obama is a Muslim" myth? I say this is funny because it is coming from dedicated myth-makers.

People are willing to believe that Barack is a Muslim because a) he's obviously just pretending to be a Christian and b) a large fraction of the American electorate sense they aren't part of his core range of loyalties. Basically, they feel they aren't in the same club or nation or allegiance as him and that this is a result of his upbringing and choices. They worry (justifiably) about where his real loyalties lay.

To think Obama might be Muslim isn't totally unreasonable given his father came from a Muslim family, his mother wasn't religious, and his stepfather came from a Muslim family as well. Given that his loyalties aren't clearly with the majority and that he dissembles about his loyalties this sort of speculation isn't surprising.

As for that Slate subtitle question, there's a far more compelling question about Barack Obama: Why won't any Democrats condemn the "Obama is a Christian" myth? The "Obama is a Christian" myth gave birth to the "Obama is a Muslim" myth.

The commentators in the mainstream liberal media are fully on board with the "Obama is a Christian" myth. Here's Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor proclaiming Barack's Christian faith:

Where are Americans getting their information about Obama’s religion? We ask that because, on this subject, a substantial and growing number of them are wrong. (Obama is Christian. We’ll say that up front, in case some of you are hazy on this point yourselves.)

You've got to be kidding. He's a political pretend Christian who, in order to help his political career, went to a black radical church for years. This church is led by one Rev. Jeremiah Wright (whose hostility to whitey and America was something that Obama took in for many years without complaint). Obama did this to try to establish his bona fides as a real American black and because he knows that in American politics it is harder for unreligious people to get elected. But Obama's obviously either agnostic or atheistic. What I want to know about Obama's religious beliefs: Is he a rational agnostic like myself? Or is he an extremist nutcase atheist who pretends to know that God (or the big universe simulation author) does not exist?

Obama needed to misrepresent himself to reach high office. Various elements of that misrepresentation are costing him politically now as the mythology becomes frayed and tattered. Competing mythologies are promoted by his political opponents. These mythologies provide a form of balance of falsehoods. Most people aren't up to getting their minds around the truth. So our political arena features an on-going battle of mythologies.

Update: OneSTDV, debating some liberal atheists about Obama's political beliefs, points to Obama's own revealed views of religion in one of his books:

I was unable to answer my daughter about heaven; I wondered if I should have told her the truth – that I was not sure what happens when we die; anymore than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the big bang.

Sounds clear enough: agnostic.

OneSTDV says we have plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Obama's claimed Christian belief.

I’m making the argument that given his childhood background, his ostentatious admiration of Islam (what other professed Christian would feel comfortable repeating “Allah is Supreme! There is no God but Allah! in perfect Arabic), his lack of Christian background prior to and now following his admittedly poor attendance at Rev Wright’s church, his name, his bowing to the Saudi king, etc… it’s not UNREASONABLE to be skeptical of his Christianity.

Further, we’re generally justified in considering politician’s claims incredulously because of the precedent of lying.

Now given these facts, one can’t forthrightly conclude Obama is a Muslim. But that’s not my argument.

My argument is that skepticism concerning his faith is a reasonable supposition.

Instead, according to Hemant and the media, only a bucolic, ignorant idiot would extrapolate these facts into skepticism.

The media want us to be left-liberal idiots, not right wing idiots.

So naturally I'm spending my Sunday night making lunches for the week and reading theeconomiccollapseblog.com. So I'm wondering are this blog's 18 signs that America is rotting right in front of our eyes accurate? So I decided to check one of more amazing items. Sure enough, Ashtabula County, Ohio with a population of about 100,000 has just one patrol car available for routine police patrol. This county has the largest land area of any county in Ohio. A few towns in it have separate police departments. But the county is still mostly covered by sheriffs - not covered as the case may be.

JEFFERSON -- In the ongoing financial crisis in Ashtabula County, the Sheriff's Department has been cut from 112 to 49 deputies. With deputies assigned to transport prisoners, serve warrants and other duties, only one patrol car is assigned to patrol the entire county of 720 square miles.

Come Peak Oil, what's life going to be like? You can look at the most hard-up places now to see your future.

The county can't afford to keep most of its criminals in jail.

The Ashtabula County Jail has confined as many as 140 prisoners. It now houses only 30 because of reductions in the staff of corrections officers.

All told, 700 accused criminals are on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.

The sheriff says he's able to keep murderers locked up at least.

A local judge has advised the good people of Ashtabula County to arm themselves.

Asked what residents should do for protection, Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey replied, " Arm themselves," and added, "We're going to have to look after each other."

It gets even better: Armed citizen posses.

"It's pretty intense times here in Ashtabula County," said John Kusar.

Kusar was part of a small group who located Lee Nash, 56, hiding in a camper on Kusar's farm. "I got outta my truck, I loaded my gun, I took my safety off, I walked up to the door and flung the door open with the barrel of my gun and he was laying in there, sleeping with a sawed-off shotgun next to him."

A lot of guys would jump at the chance to join a real posse. Many would pay for the experience. The sheriff ought to consider the idea of tourist posses. Could be a revenue source. Let visiting tourists pay slap on the hand cuffs. Or let them pay to drive criminals to jail and court in a real police patrol car. Sound like fun?

The sheriff's department does not have time to investigate burglaries.

And while the sheriff will still investigate homicides, he has little resources to investigate crimes such as burglaries.

Some victims "are going to have to call the insurance companies and deal with it," Johnson said.

Sounds like a market for well-trained guard dogs. German shepherds or Rotties or Doberman Pinschers? How about a relatively rarer Belgian breed? Then mic your house to record the sound of bones breaking as the dog bites hard on an intruder.

Can the next really big potential war be avoided?

Four years before World War I, British author and politician Norman Angell published "The Great Illusion," arguing that military conquests had become obsolete between modern economies. Many policy makers use the same logic today to predict that China and the United States can avoid war. Like their forebears, they may be wrong.

That's the implicit argument of University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer, who delivered the annual Michael Hintze Lecture at Sydney University this week. Politics, rather than economics, will decisively shape the future of Asia just as it did Europe in the previous century, he believes. China's ascent is likely to spark an intense security competition with the U.S., leading to the strong possibility of war between the world's two biggest economies.

One fear is that future generations of Chinese leaders will become far less cautious. Not mentioned in the article: The American people were foolish enough to elect George W. Bush followed by Barack Obama. One can only guess who they'll choose next.

Once Chinese power rivals and even surpasses that of the US we are going to need strategic calculators of Richard Nixon's level of ability. But my guess is that future Presidents will be chosen due to their ethnic loyalties as the country becomes more balkanized. Presidential candidate quality will probably decline.

So where to decamp to if you can foresee an inevitable war? Trying to get out of harm's way at the last minute will be difficult to do for all but the most wealthy. Better to move in advance. But to where? Canada's physically too close to the US. Australia might break from US alliance and become neutral. After all, immigration trends there will create a big Chinese-leaning faction and China will continue to buy large amounts of Australian natural resources. Maybe Eastern Europe will be the place to be. Or perhaps the most heavily German/Italian part of Brazil. That's where the hot models come from.

Socialism still has not become a viable way to organize an economy. But Hugo Chavez didn't get the memo. A Reuters reporter visited a commune funded by the Venezuelan government (funded of course by oil exports to capitalistic countries) and found that commune members lack revolutionary socialist fervor.

Neither ideological nor productive fervor were much visible at the Cacique Tiuna Commune, which boasts a plastics plant, a vegetable garden, a "socialist" carpentry shop and a plant nursery.

During a visit last week, the plastics plant was idled, the irrigated garden was awaiting "refinancing" to start and at the carpentry shop only a handful of laborers worked under the stern gaze of a mural depicting the historic Indian chief Tiuna after which the commune is named.

"The Comandante (Chavez) wants this to be a showcase community," said Yamilet Ramirez, the Commune's spokesperson. "The idea is that it should be self-supporting."

But the Cacique Tiuna commune seemed some way off its intended goal as a self-sustaining, self-governing community.

Click thru and read the whole thing if you want to make sure I didn't miss any revolutionary fervor of the working class. Or click thru and read it if you enjoy cautionary tales or are wondering just how messed up Venezuela is going to become (pretty messed up I would guess).

The people living in the commune are happy that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had funded the construction of their housing. But one of the residents admitted they felt apathy. Ole buddy Hugo wants his communes to become self-sustaining. Good luck with that Hugo. For your sake hope the price of oil skyrockets so that you can continue to play with oil-funded communism.

If Hugo can't get his oil production up then his party isn't going to last. The Venezuelans would be lucky if the oil ran out sooner and the socialists got the boot. But my guess is the socialists will get to remain in power long enough to do a lot more damage. The Spanish upper and middle class will seethe. The Amerinds will just keep accepting the hand-outs funded by oil money.