“Every decade, voices rise to push socialism as the cure for inequality. Yet Venezuela, once Latin America’s richest nation with oil revenues of $90 billion a year, saw poverty soar to over 94% of households by 2021 and the richest 10% now control more than 50% of income. The Soviet Union promised equality, but by the 1980s its elite ‘nomenklatura’ enjoyed privileges while ordinary citizens queued for bread — and after collapse, Russia’s Gini index of inequality jumped from 0.24 in 1988 to 0.48 by 1993. What begins as a promise of fairness ends in deeper inequality, and the road back is long and brutal.”