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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

$250,000 of it's own money?

As it turns out, Chavez is asking his followers to give up luxury. Actually, he is demanding them to do so since he only wants true socialist by his side. I think I'm going to sit down and wait to see Jorge Rodriguez giving up his Audi and Iris Valera her Mercedes SUV just to name a few (they might have changed cars by now but you get the point). Yes, Chavez meant things that are extra, like an extra refrigerator or an extra truck or things that are just laying around and well, this government officials need to get to their jobs. But shouldn't a true socialist relay on public transportation? or maybe have a car but not such a luxury car? We would have to set the limit of luxury in order to really judge them but I just wanted to point that out.

Now the real issue here is Chavez announcement of his willing to donate $250,000 of his own money. Yes, unless the press is quoting him wrong, he did say of his own money.

Before I go any further here are some articles, in English, with the story:
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-2009--12-12--.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/06/11/chavez.socialists.reut/index.html

Let's do some math now. I'm going to assume that the "SOCIALIST" Venezuelan president makes the same amount of money as the "CAPITALIST" US president. The amount is: $400,000 a year that, using the black market exchange rate which Chavez recently used for himself, (http://buscador.eluniversal.com/2007/06/12/eco_art_chavez-calcula--con_316727.shtml
http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2007/06/chavez-sells-at-black-market-rates.html)
turns out to be roughly: 1,600,000,000 Bs. Actually lets calculate it at the official rate too, which would be about half or: 860,000,000 Bs. that Chavez, if making the same as the US president, would make on a year of work. Now, we can assume that Chavez salary is not even close to the Capitalist, Imperialist, Devlisih US president, so, since I can find anywhere how much the US president should make, let's assume he makes just a quarter of it which is $100,000 or 400,000,000 Bs. at the parallel or black market rate and 215,000,000 Bs. at the official rate. Well, that figure is still to big for me, so I am going to say that Chavez actually makes just 1/8 of what the Us president makes a year which would be roughly $50,000 (a little bit over the median of what the average american family makes a year. Census link for 2002-2003). So $50,000 at the parallel market rate: 200,000,000 Bs or 107,500,000 at the official rate.

All right we have some simple math speculating what Chavez, as Venezuelan president, make a year. We are going to use the last amount of 107,500,000 Bs or a litlle less than 9,000,000 Bs per month, which would be around 12 times more than the minimum wage in Venezuela (calculating the minimum wage at 700,000 Bs per month, is actually a little less). I think is also fair to say that Chavez didn't have to much on his bank account before being president since he was just a poor para-trooper from Barinas (a state in Venezuela where Chavez is from) but I am going to set his bank account at 20,000,000 Bs which at 1998 was a decent amount for a saving account, around $28,000 calculating at a 700 Bs per US$ rate. (I'm not sure the rate is correct but since I'm assuming moth of the math we will use it).

Moving on, making $50,000 a year, for 8 years + $28,000, without spending a single dime on anything (why should he, venezuelans pay for his clothes, trips, food etc with their oil money and taxes) Chavez would have, today the amount of $428,000 which would be enough for him to donate $250,000 of his own money. He would actually be donating more than half of his money if this numbers are correct.

So, the question now is: Exactly how much money does Chavez makes a year and how much money does he has sitting in his Bank Account? I mean how much money would you need to have in order to donate $250,000 of your own money to your cause? Maybe you would donate half, or even all of it if you truly believed on it. But if Chavez had done so, wouldn't he say it out loud to prove his commitment and his socialist nature? But how does donation work for a true socialist? Is he givinng 10% of his money? is he giving more? is he giving less? Who knows, but we do know is that he has enough to give at least $250,000 of his "own" money. It would be nice if public servants finances were made public like the imperialists of the US which at least show us their Tax returns which clearly show how much they earned during the year.