EDITORIAL: Higher minimum wage can’t save Venezuela from socialism

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

That’s an insightful quip often attributed to late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. So what do you do when all those people no longer have any money?

If you’re Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, you give all those people a big, fat raise. Problem solved, right?

As HotAir.com’s Jazz Shaw reported, Maduro recently raised the minimum wage by 3,000 percent. And because minimum wage hikes are immune to the laws of economics, Venezuelans are now enjoying unparalleled prosperity. Or not.

Because what Maduro ignores is that somebody — namely, the employers of all those people who just got this inane raise — has to pay those wages. And those employers, just like almost everyone else in Venezuela, are broke or close to it.

The headline on Bloomberg reporter Fabiola Zerpa’s follow-up article said it all: “Venezuela raises minimum wage 3,000% and lots of workers get fired.”

This specific raise is guaranteeing 7 million Venezuelan workers a salary of 1,800 bolivars a month, which is worth the whopping total of $20 at the black-market rate. Such is the state of this socialist economic paradise.

“President Nicolas Maduro intended the mandate as political boost, but it’s having the opposite effect as companies, already hit by Venezuela’s epic economic contraction, tell workers they can’t afford to keep them,” Zerpa wrote.

The government won’t even allow Venezuelan companies to develop a workaround for this massive mandate. As Shaw pointed out, “Some employers have gotten creative and tried to set up various types of barter systems to pay their employees. Others turned to the black market and started paying people in American dollars under the table. But if the ruling socialist party discovers that you are ‘breaking the rules’ and abandoning the bolivar, they come along and seize your business, throwing you in jail for good measure.”

This is all excellent food for thought as the mainstream media and Hollywood go gaga over young socialist superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, running for a House seat from a New York City district, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the elder statesman of socialist pipe dreams in America.

You can’t fix a broken economy by giving out raises that aren’t worth the paper money they’re printed on. Venezuela continues to learn this lesson on practically a daily basis. American voters enthralled by socialism should take note.