Ontario raises minimum wage 30 percent, stoking world’s fastest inflation. Wait, wasn’t that Venezuela?

Here’s an article that came out on New Year’s Eve about Maduro’s “Good News!” that for fun we will rewrite from an Ontario and Canadian perspective.  Note the incredible amount of similarities and the lack of difference we can cite between the two.  One difference is that Venezuela went all-in with socialist policy and capitulated.  All edits in strikethrough and italics:

CARACAS TORONTO (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced a 40 percent increase to the minimum wage as of January, a move that will foment what many economists already consider hyperinflation in the oil-rich but crisis-stricken nation.

In his televised year-end address, leftist Maduro Wynne said the new wage level would protect workers against what he calls Washington’s “economic war” to sabotage socialism Ontario’s rising cost of living caused by its own Keynesian and socialist economic policies.

“Good news!” said the former bus driver school trustee and union leader, speaking next to a Venezuelan Ontario flag in a midday address.

Most economists say the government is in fact fomenting a vicious cycle in a country already wrestling with the world’s fastest inflation.

To counter those price increases, Maduro Wynne has been raising the minimum wage, but quickening inflation coupled with a depreciating bolivar currency loonie has plunged millions into poverty.

After factoring all outstanding federal, provincial and personal debt, Venezuelans Ontarians that don’t get laid off will now earn some 797,510 bolivars extra dollars a month, factoring in food tickets, or just over $7 on the widely used black market index. Millions will still be unable to afford without drawing from more debt three meals a day, while the increase is likely to stoke inflation further. Prices went up 1,369 percent between January and November, according to figures released earlier this month by the opposition-led Congress, which estimated the 2017 rate would top 2,000 percent. The Venezuelan Ontario government no longer publishes realistic inflation data on a regular basis.

Opposition politicians say Maduro’s Wynne’s refusal to overhaul Venezuela’s Ontario’s state-led economic model and stop excessive money printing will only create more misery in 2018.

Maduro Wynne, however, spent much of his half-hour address blaming others for the country’s woes. He said foreign and local media were spreading ”negative propaganda,” while Venezuela Ontario was facing “attacks” on its currency and attempts to “sabotage” its oil industry.

The numbers aren’t completely accurate after the edits, but this article that is supposed to detail Venezuela’s collapse really isn’t that far off in describing Ontario and Canada’s economic state as well.

Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.  How about those who can’t even learn from the present?

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