Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro demonstrates his Salt Bae sprinkling technique during a press conference at the Miraflores Presidential Palace, in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018. Maduro demonstrated the technique after speaking about the invitation to the famed Nusr-Et steakhouse in Istanbul when he stopped over briefly in Turkey on the way home from a trip to China to raise badly needed investment. Videos of Maduro feasting on a steak is drawing fury from opponents of the embattled socialist leader. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

So how’s socialism working out?

Well, if you use any negative example to someone who’s a fan, they’ll just tell you it wasn’t done correctly.

But for what it’s worth, Venezuela’s a smidge less than a shining beacon of Hitler’s genius: Residents of once-prosperous Maracaibo are renting caskets.

Renting is generally a bad idea anyway; but if you’re ever faced with the choice of purchasing or leasing a coffin, I’ve got some pretty sound advice…

Back to the destruction of a nation — formerly the richest in South America — Maracaibo once boasted a population of 2,000,000+.

In fact, it was one of the country’s most prosperous cities.

Yet, after years of socialist rule — as per the Associated Press — many townspeople can’t afford boxes for burial.

They can cost as much as $300.

Therefore, some have resorted to interring their loved ones in pieces of furniture.

Others are renting.

For as little as $50, they can acquire temporary possession of a casket for the service.

Afterward, they return it to the funeral home.

Cremation becomes the only option.

Some who can afford a casket can’t buy a headstone, so there’s no permanent marker of the grave

Here’s a harrowing account:

As temperatures in this tropical city soared above 90, Vargas’s corpse spent three days on the morgue floor, while his wife, Rossangelys, borrowed money to cover a makeshift coffin and transportation to their home. In the family’s living room, in a lawless part of town pocked with abandoned homes, the family held a grim wake. The narrow, black casket lay across two metal stands. Mourners averted eyes from the deceased’s infested face. Rossangelys tried, and failed, to control the smell by filling gaps in the coffin’s wood with caulking.

They could afford no burial plot. So they dug up the bones of Vargas’s long-dead brother in a local cemetery strewn with broken caskets desecrated by grave robbers.

[The wife] wept by her husband’s resting place. The expelled coffin of her husband’s brother lay in ruins nearby.

Some believe socialism is the way of a better future. It should be observed, though, that many of them may have no clue as to what the word actually means.

In Venezuela, it means a lot.

-ALEX

See 3 more pieces from me:

Holy Moley, We’re Toast: ATL’s Democratic Socialists Conference Delivers the Most Bizarre 49 Seconds You’ll Hear All Month

Chicago Politician Says Socialism Should Have ‘Control of Every Single Facet of Our Life’

Pawn Stars’ Host Blasts Socialism: ‘There’s No Point in Working Hard’

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