Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe in 2015 continued to suffer from factionalization of the two major parties and a deepening economic malaise. Over the course of more than 20 by-elections, held mostly as a result of lawmakers being expelled from both major parties, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) greatly increased its share of seats in the National Assembly during the year.

Eric Garris has gone into the incident involving Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe, who suddenly showed up uninvited, so I won't go into too many of the details. Suffice to say that I made a point of working a denunciation of Mugabe's thuggery into my speech, an event that seemed to catalyze general opposition to his presence. An event at which Mugabe was supposed to speak was canceled, and, in answer to inquiries about Mugabe's presence, [former Malaysian prime minister] Dr. Mahathir remarked: "Everybody can attend. If he wants to say how good it is to be a dictator, he can."

The problem with fiat money is there is no limit to the amount of it the government can print. Accordingly, history demonstrates that fiat currencies eventually are debased through overprinting as the value is inflated away. Three years ago, the debasement of the currency in Zimbabwe reached a point where the government was printing 100-trillion-dollar—yes, trillion—bank notes, which were almost valueless. The citizens of Zimbabwe then converted their money as rapidly as possible into U.S. or other "hard" currencies, and the financial system in Zimbabwe collapsed.

Unfortunately, socialism ... refuses to go away ... To give just one example, between 1999, when Hugo Chavez took over as President, and 2016, average per capita income in Venezuela rose by 2 percent. In the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, it rose by 41 percent. A similar story can be observed in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, Chavez's erstwhile friend, has been in charge of his unfortunate country since 1980. Since then, Africa's income per person rose by 48 percent. In Zimbabwe, a socialist dictatorship, it has declined by 25 percent. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.