Our nation has problems, and your nation has problems, but be thankful you don’t live in Venezuela, which is truly one of the most fucked places on earth.

Sure, Syria has a horrific war and plenty of nations around the world have populations that are destitute and disease-ridden. But the thing that really hurts is how far you fall, and nobody in the world today is falling harder and faster than Venezuela, a place that not so long ago thought it might be able to build a nice socialist paradise on top of an endless sea of oil revenue. And now?

“The only question now is whether Venezuela’s government or economy will completely collapse first,” writes Matt O’Brien in a jaunty overview of this fucked up global fucked-spot. What happened? An incompetent government combined with a huge drop in global oil prices have produced an economy that is shrinking at a breathtaking clip, crumbling infrastructure, a lack of goods for people to buy even if they could afford it, and runaway inflation. (It is worth noting that the government’s top economic official “rejects some basic tenets of conventional economics, for example that printing too much money causes inflation.”) Venezuela’s oil production is falling, and oil prices are falling even faster, leaving the government woefully short on funds. They’re set to default on their national debt. Corrupt officials may have embezzled hundreds of billions of dollars. Venezuela is rated one of the most corrupt countries on earth. The nation’s biggest company is begging the government to seek international aid “to avoid the collapse of the food supply.” Unfortunately, most of their neighbors are too pissed off at them to care.

Also, Caracas is the most dangerous city on earth, and the country is full of the Zika virus.

Book your affordable Venezuelan vacation now.

[Photo: AP]