Let’s take Joe Biden at his word. (I know it’s crazy, but just play along.)

In the seconds and final debate of Election 2020, Joe Biden promised two mutually exclusive changes:

To eliminate the oil industry.
To do so without eliminating jobs. “No one will lose their job,” he says.

While President Trump and conservatives are saying, “Joe Biden will kill oil jobs,” I think Joe actually has a plan. A plan that has been tried before.

For Biden to eliminate oil without putting oil workers out of work, he’d have socialize the oil industry. He would likely follow the example of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

On May 1, 2007, Marxist president Hugo Chavez nationalized the country’s oil industry. And that kicked off a chain of events that resulted in rampant poverty in what was once Latin America’s richest country. According Reuters:

Venezuela’s poverty rate surged in 2019 to levels unmatched elsewhere in Latin America as the once-prosperous OPEC nation’s hyperinflationary economic collapse continued for a sixth straight year, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Chavez’s move on oil forced nationalization of adjacent industries, too. Companies that supplied equipment, for instance, could not manufacture and sell products at the low prices Venezuela’s socialist government was willing to pay. So, Chavez nationalized those businesses.

The pattern rippled through the Venezuelan economy. Over the next decade, the government would nationalize at least 18 industries and companies:

Oil
Agriculture
Finance
Industry (manufacturing)
Gold
Steel
Telecommunications
Transportation
Tourism

The socialization of Venezuela was begun as a wealth redistribution effort. Like all attempts to redistribute wealth, though, Venezuela only destroyed its wealth. Again, from Reuters:

“There is no wealth to distribute,” said Pedro Luis España, a UCAB sociologist who contributed to the study. “The rise in poverty in Venezuela does not have to do with inequality. The problem has been the abrupt fall in economic output.”

If Biden wins and attempts to end the oil industry in America, a similar series of events will unfold. One industry after another will be nationalized. Wages will fall. Business output will collapse. America will look like Venezuela.

This is the Democrats' vision for America: an elite, protected class running government, and squalor for everybody else.

On November 3, vote like your life depends on it.

Hennessy's View

Biden Plans to Nationalize Oil Industry