In Venezuela the people with jobs skip work to try to find food

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:

At 6:40 a.m., Pablo Ruiz squats at the gate of a decaying refinery in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, steeling himself for eight Sisyphean hours of brushing anti-rust paint onto pipes under a burning sun. For breakfast, the 55-year-old drank corn-flour water.

Ruiz's weekly salary of 110,000 bolivares — about 50 cents at the black-market exchange rate — buys him less than a kilo of corn meal or rice. His only protein comes from 170 grams of canned tuna included in a food box the government provides to low-income families. It shows up every 45 days or so.

"I haven't eaten meat for two months," he said. "The last time I did, I spent my whole week's salary on a chicken meal."

Hunger is hastening the ruin of Venezuelan's oil industry as workers grow too weak and hungry for heavy labor. With children dying of malnutrition and adults sifting garbage for table scraps, food has become more important than employment, and thousands are walking off the job. Absenteeism and mass resignations mean few are left to produce the oil that keeps the tattered economy functioning.

Venezuela, a socialist autocracy that once was South America's most prosperous nation, is suffering a collapse almost without precedent, its gross domestic product dropping 40 percent since 2013. Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the government oil company and economic linchpin, has fallen into chaos as leaders replaced expert managers with loyalists, padded the payroll and channeled revenue to social programs — and to epic corruption. Production fell by half in the past 16 years. Daily output dropped to 1.77 million barrels in January from a peak of 3.34 million in 2001.

Much of the decline is due to lack of money for maintenance and exploration. Recently, though, hunger is to blame. A survey by three Venezuelan universities released Wednesday found that that more than 64 percent of residents lost weight in 2017, on average 25 pounds. More than 61 percent of respondents said they had gone to bed hungry over the past three months.

Ivan Freitas, a PDVSA union leader and critic of President Nicolas Maduro's regime, said Wednesday that in Zulia State 12 malnourished workers collapsed in November and December and had to be taken off drilling platforms for treatment. More go down each day, he said.
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Those who quit without notice risk losing their pensions, as bureaucrats refuse to process paperwork. Many managers live in terror of arrest since the Maduro regime purged the industry, imprisoning officials from low-level apparatchiks to former oil ministers. In one human resources office, a sign advertised a limit of five resignations a day.

"Management is holding them back to stop brain and technical drain," said Jose Bodas, general secretary of United Federation of Venezuelan Oil Workers. He estimates 500 employees have resigned at the Puerto La Cruz refinery and nearby processing facilities in the past 12 months — even though superiors have labeled them "traitors to the homeland," a phrase that often precedes arrest. In the streets, families sell their boots and the red coveralls.

"They're giving up because of hunger," Bodas said. "They're leaving because they get paid better abroad. This is unheard of, a catastrophe."
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The leadership in Venezuela meets the Einstein definition of insanity where they keep doing the same failed policies expecting different results.  Socialism is killing people and yet they will not examine alternatives.  They have a bus driver in charge and he is driving the country over a cliff.