The ECONOMIST on Hugo Chavez

I have friends who swear by a magazine called THE ECONOMIST. This British publication has a circulation of about 750,000 proud readers in the USA. I have tried to keep away from economists, myself, after one of them told me to pull my pension funds out of the stock market when the S&P had reached about 3,000. Shortly after that, when the S&P went to 14,000,  I became convinced that economists don't know jack. Today I've found a few economists I listen to, but that's another matter.

This morning our local paper republished a story from THE ECONOMIST on the legacy of Hugo Chavez, and I will attempt to translate two sentences of it from the British for you right here. For example, in discussing Venezuela's booming oil income, ECON wrote: "Chavez used this windfall to buy himself popular support, with social programs and handouts." In  American English that would read "Chavez used the nation's oil money to lower the percentage of his citizens living below the poverty line from 22% to 8%, the third lowest in South America."

I realize that my translation omits something vital from the ECON article, as translations often do. Perhaps I should try again. "Chavez used the nation's oil money to lower the percentage of his citizens living below the poverty line from 22% to 8%, the third lowest in South America, the dirty bastard."  That seems to capture the ECON tone a little better. 

The last sentence of the ECON article reads: "Now that the man has gone, however, Latin America's democrats have an easier task." Here the translation is much simpler. Where the ECONOMIST used the term "democrats," the rest of us would use the term "capitalists." In THE ECONOMIST, confusedly, the two words are employed as synonyms.