by Rodger Paxton
Of all the things New Hampshire could import – oil, clothing, pug slippers for your pug – perhaps the two that will have the most long-term impact on our state would be ideas and people.
If you’re like me, you can feel our state is at a crossroads – a radical turn to the left or a more sensible approach. When historians write about this period in NH history, will they write about how socialist ideas infested the Live Free or Die state, or will they write about a heroic group of people flowing into the state to promote the ideas of freedom?
First, let’s take a close look at a current, real-world example of what NH would look like if socialists win and their ideas take over our state. We can see a model for their socialist utopia unraveling right now in South America.
If the socialists get their way
As the Venezuelan economy has been collapsing, their government has grown increasingly authoritarian. They have the lowest wages in the region, and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis has broken the record for the highest inflation in the Americas, to such an extent that by 2019 hyperinflation will reach the astounding figure of 10,000,000%.
This is due, according to the Venezuelan economist José Toro Hardy, to “aberrant public policies” full of state controls. Toro Hardy explained that with the new estimate, Venezuela is among the worst inflation cases that humanity has known in its entire history. According to Hardy:
This is the result of aberrant public policies and unrestrained populism. The government of Venezuela has incurred an unmanageable fiscal deficit to finance the cash flow of PDVSA, which is the oil company of the market.
The Government has resorted to demanding from the Central Bank of Venezuela that it make immense issues of money without support; that money is incorporated into the country’s money supply and, consequently, demands goods. But since there are no goods to be had, because they have destroyed the productive apparatus through expropriations, price controls, through all kinds of socialist measures, what they have achieved is that there is a shortage of absolutely everything. In Venezuela there are no medicines, there is no food, but the result is that with this huge money supply demanding goods that do not exist, the only thing that is achieved is that prices go up.
Given this situation, 91% of Venezuelan families live below the poverty line, and 65% of them face extreme poverty.
Hardy added:
It is very difficult to live in these conditions, first because the country has become impoverished, because there is no salary that can withstand this increase in prices, and that adds to the scarcity of almost any product. People are getting desperate and living in terrible anguish and for that reason, many Venezuelans simply choose to leave the country.
This is socialism. It has lead to the downfall of many governments throughout history and has lead to two of the most impoverished countries in the world today, Venezuela and North Korea. These are not exceptions to the rule, folks. These are the rules.
NH’s best import
Every time the left tries to import Venezuelan-style socialist planning into NH, an ideological struggle ensues. If NH socialists have their way, our kids and grandkids will inherit a state on the Venezuelan road to serfdom.
But what if there were a way you could feel supremely confident that freedom will prevail? What if you could personally take control of our state’s future? What if, instead of socialist ideas, NH could fight back and import defenders of liberty?
Of course, I’m talking about a NH socialist’s worst enemy: Free Staters. [Note: Are you listening, Cynthia Chase? -Skip]
Up until now, the number of Free State Project participants flowing into NH has been a slow trickle. The FSP aims to turn up the pressure on NH socialists in 2019, but that can only happen with your endorsement.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. Does our state need socialists to take the wheel and turn the Granite State left towards a Venezuelan future? Or does our state need more reinforcements in the fight for freedom?
Right here and now, I personally invite you to boost NH’s best imports – Free Staters – by supporting their efforts today.
