Socialism works. Here's how well it works.
The United States had toilet paper in the 19th century. The USSR got it slightly later in 1969.
Around the time that Bernie Sanders was pushing 30 and bumming around Vermont trying to get people enthusiastic about Socialism, Soviet citizens were finally able to move up to toilet paper from having to use their mandatory subscription to Communist newspapers. (In Cuba, they're still mostly using Communist newspapers.)
But the lack of toilet paper did make intelligence gathering ventures like Operation Tamarisk, in which classified documents were used as toilet paper by the Communists, and then picked up by Western agents by going through the trash.
Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the USSR and is a fan of Communist Cuba. But what would Socialism do to the supply of toilet paper in America? Let's look at what it did to Venezuela.
A Venezuelan state agency on Friday ordered the temporary takeover of a factory that produces toilet paper in what it called an effort to ensure consistent supplies after embarrassing shortages earlier this year.
The prices began to rise from .90 CUC to 1.50 CUC (from about $1 USD to $1.65 USD) for a pack of four rolls. Even still, though the price of toilet paper hit 10 percent of a person’s average monthly wage, women continued to buy it. Now we were edging toward the height of a paroxysm.
Then it happened – the price tripled. There was no conciliation or any other options. Now I had to spend 30 percent of my monthly salary on toilet paper if I wanted to maintain my hygiene.
Soon word spread that the long-awaited rolls had arrived, and despite a government-imposed limit of one package per person, the checkout lines stretched all the way to the decimated dairy case in the back of the store.
“This is so depressing,” said Maria Plaza, 30, a lawyer, an hour and a half into her wait. “Pathetic.”
“Soon we’ll be using newspaper, just like they do in Cuba!” said an elderly man nearby, inching forward in line. “Yeah! Like Cuba!” others shouted.
“There’s nothing to buy where we live,” said Maria Valencia, a preschool teacher from the oil-producing hub of Maracaibo, near Venezuela’s western border, while shopping at a government-run Bicentenario supermarket where products sold by recently nationalized companies carried little heart symbols and the phrase “Made in Socialism.”
Socialism. It just sends countries into the toilet.