Ok, so, first and foremost, the US is a socialist nation and economy. It just is. We can debate to what degree and that's fine but it's not debatable that it is, at core, the day to day backbone, socialized.
Now, that said, our economy is like water; it can go over, through, around, under, permeate and erode anything in it's path. It's that big and that diverse. We can do #### like Med D and TARP and the Stimulus and QE, piss away trillions on fruitless wars, maintain income transfer at enormous levels and just keep on keeping on. Venezuela, simply put, can't. We're like a super tanker rolling around the beltway; yeah, we get dinged and smashed into and smash into things but it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme, we just shrug it off. Venezuela is like a motorized unicycle; they need everything to go just so.
The thing you Philistines and Druids simply refuse to come to grips with is, like waste, fraud and abuse, we CAN, do and will just give stuff away. Why? Because all along the way people are getting paid. Landlords, grocery stores, the cable people, the car people, the clothing store, the restaurants, on and on and on and on. We are simply THAT wealthy. If we just give you $50k a year, what do you do with it? Spend it. There is the zero sum mindset, yours, and the correct one, mine; the point is simply that, as long as dollars are flowing, it does not matter. Your mind set WAS correct in a pure capitalist, gold standard (or silver) mindset where wealth was real and tangible as was 'money'.
We run the biggest and best Ponzi scheme, ever. If we run short of new 'suckers' coming in, we just make 'em up. As long as the cash flows, and with electronic 'money', we can, and as long as we don't let the rich consolidate and control too much of it, and we won't, because we can't, and that's the key, then the party goes on and you're sitting on 10,000,000 rounds for a day that will never come.
Except in Venezuela. Where it is coming. Because they can't do what we can.
Luckily, I'm pretty sure he can pull that off 
