... or not.

Well that didn't take long.

Maduro knows the military keeps him in power. He makes sure top military have access to scotch, steaks, silk, Rolexes and whatever their little hearts desire.

The poor are given a bag of groceries every once in a while, especially around elections. Basic stuff like rice, black beans, pan harina, oil and sometimes eggs.

From what I read/hear poor Venezuelans still adore Chavez but blame Maduro for the bad economy.

More than 8 million Venezuelans have voted with their feet.

Apr 9, 2024
By Michael Galant

Economic sanctions have become a go-to instrument of US foreign policy. In recent decades, the number of US-imposed sanctions has more than quadrupled, but the increased use of this form of coercion has taken place with little discussion of the enormous human cost. Today, a growing body of evidence makes clear that broad, unilateral sanctions often kill — as well as severely harm — innocent people around the world.

. . .

What Are the Impacts of Economic Sanctions?
The evidence that economic sanctions cause serious harm to civilian populations is overwhelming. Broad sectoral sanctions are known to stunt a country’s overall economic growth, sometimes causing or prolonging recessions and even depressions. Sanctions also hinder access to essential goods such as food, energy, and medicine; obstruct humanitarian assistance; and, as a result, generate additional poverty, hunger, disease, and high numbers of avoidable deaths. The harm caused by economic sanctions, as with most economic shocks, is disproportionately borne by women and other oppressed and marginalized communities. US economic sanctions can even obstruct multilateral responses to global crises. For example, when the IMF issued $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights to support the global economy in 2021, US sanctions on central banks prevented many countries from making use of their share of the allocation.

A recent literature review showed that 30 of 32 peer-reviewed, quantitative studies found that broad sanctions have a significant negative impact on measures such as income, poverty, mortality, and human rights. US sanctions on Venezuela are estimated to have contributed to tens of thousands of deaths in a single year. Sanctions on North Korea were estimated to have led to the deaths of approximately 4,000 civilians in 2018 alone. In short: sanctions kill.

These devastating economic and humanitarian consequences in turn drive civilians to seek better lives elsewhere, including in the United States. This link between sanctions and migration has been highlighted by leading economists, members of Congress, and foreign leaders.

Are the Civilian Impacts of Economic Sanctions Avoidable?
Many, including US Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), when he served as Chair of the House Rules Committee, have argued that broad sanctions are imposed with the intention of targeting civilians, and with the implicit goal of inducing such widespread hardship as to lead affected populations to put pressure on, or overthrow, their governments: “The impact of sectoral and secondary sanctions is indiscriminate, and purposely so,” wrote McGovern in a letter to President Biden, calling for an end to the sanctions against Venezuela. “Although U.S. officials regularly say that the sanctions target the government and not the people, the whole point of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is to increase the economic cost to Venezuela … Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work. … It is not Venezuelan officials who suffer the costs. It is the Venezuelan people.”

More:
https://cepr.net/publications/us-sanctions-policy-frequently-asked-questions/