Ur Doing it Wrong.

As the laziest 104 student of mine can tell you after just 8 weeks of marginal teaching: price ceilings will create shortage. Shortages in fact, the ones so common to the USSR, were not caused by bad winters or corrupt capitalists, but the imposition of a price ceiling which creates market inefficiencies, and leads to incentives to cheat the system.

So Hugo Chavez, congratulations. You are dumber than my worst 104 student.

The government creates shortages in staple goods like milk, beef, and coffee. Then it appropriates any taxes and oil profits in order to import these goods that the economy (the people) could be producing itself (and has been proven to be able to produce itself, before the miracle of "21st Century Socialism", which is actually more like 19th century bad economic policy), and then provides these goods even more inefficiently to the poor (after the bureaucrats take their dues of course).

Okay... maybe you're not stupid. But definitely evil.