Tainari88 wrote:@XogGyux do you think that the solution to poverty and not having an ability to live a middle class life if you study and work and have an ability to serve the nation, but you are relegated to exile outside the nation? Is a solution to that? .
Well, the is precisely my point. By all accounts, cuba was a middle income country just prior to the revolution. It compared to countries such as Argentina (not guatemala, ecador and haiti like some people like to compare). Along comes this asshole (which I am willing to admit that might have had good intentions initially, I don't dispute that because I didn't live that time and history on this topic is very prone to manipulations), and fucked it up. Today, cuba shouldn't be compared to haiti, honduras and guatemala because that is not the path that cuba was walking 70 years ago.
Where is cuba today? GDP of 100bill according to google, who knows if this is accurate at all since the goverment is so secretive and flat out lies... but even if it is... it is actually lower than Puerto Rico's at 105's. Cuba has 4x the population.... Per capita supposedly it has a 8k GPD. Offcourse, the average Cuban does not make 8K USD, not even in a 100 years, in fact the average cuban cannot even make 1K per year. Seriously, my doctor mother used to make 500 pesos per month which was about 25 USD per month, the whole year would be less than $400 USD. Now... is this a "middle income" country? No fuck NO.
Cuba used to have a solid industry of beef meat production. One day the brilliant genius that Fidel was thought... how about, we switch these meat producing cattle for milk producing ones, that way we can have lots of milk, and then we can still kill them and get meat anyways and kill 2 birds with 1 stone. BRILLIANT... except he fucked up the whole industry despite being warned that this didn't make sense multiple times.
Or that time the goverment decided to introduce a modified version of the claria fish into cuban's environment, that way we can have a rapidly reproducing fish that the cuban people can use to feed themselves... oh well that didn't go well at all, again, despite warnings.
Imagine this, you are the director of a sugar refinery in Cuba. Along comes your boss, a political appointee and he tells you... hey @Tainari88 , how about you crank up the machinery to 110% so we can produce another 5-10% extra sugar this quarter? And you reply... well last year we ended up producing so much sugar we couldnt sell it all, it attracted mouse into our warehouse, furthermore we kind of need to shut down a couple of our big machines for 2 weeks for scheduled maintenance, I don't think it makes sense to try to push production when we don't even know what to do with what we already produce and when our machines are at the brink of being fucked up. And the guy just tells you, well... my boss wants to announce in the assambly that we broke last years record so you will have to figure out how to do it, does not matter if we just throw the sugar into the lake after.
Idiotic discussions such as these happened ALL THE TIME, it is ridiculous.
It is not even doing well housing the homeless.
Look, this is another topic. I don't think the homeless issue is entirely a money/economic one.
Imagine if you had your mother and father and granny and everyone still in Cuba and you by yourself in Florida without their loving support all this time?
I don't understand how this is relevant at all.
If my family was in cuba I would miss them, that wouldn't change the fact cuba is a shithole.
Cuba's problems are also economic big time.
It is not just an economic problem. The economic problem exists because of the political problem. Opening Cuba to international investments/economy would mean to make significant and perhaps more importantly long-lasting changes to the cuban political system.
If Cuba had Puerto Rico's numbers? There would be 7 million Cubans in the USA that could never buy Cuban Real estate because they were priced out and they would be stuck in ghettos in the Eastern seaboard. They would have to have given up all of Cuban land to wealthy investors and people who used Havana for Mafia and tax evasion purposes. And the people would have no right to vote over their own country.
Probably there would be even more. Plenty of cubans desperate to leave but they can't. How many of your fellow puertoricans had to risk their lifes on a raft to get out of puerto rico? How many Elian Gonzalez lost their moms trying to flee your homeland?
This is not a pissing context but if it was I win
. No seriously, the key is perspective.
Furthermore, there is no thread that I am aware of praising of how great the puerto rican goverment is... how puerto rico send their doctors to help honduras and guatemala and how they are a success example for communism.
That is not progress.
Exactly, it is regression. Cuba has not progressed in a long long time. Certainly since the USSR broke it has been downhill for cuba, it has even forced the government to take some reformative steps with very limited success because they are all half measures.
But if you think giving up your independence is worth it for a Samsung fridge and a washing machine?
Really? That is what you understand? What is the value of independence? North Korea is independent, do you think they are better off than Puerto Ricans? Freedom? I have far more freedom in this country than I had in Cuba. Ironically given the sensitive topics discussed in this forum, if I was in cuba I probably couldn't post in here, and if I did it would probably be monitored and I could get in trouble for what I am saying right now. So really? Giving up your independence?
You are not much different than the vulture types who think the only people with the rights to liberty and happiness are the ones with the $$$$$.
Wow, now I am a vulture. Good to know
We better start coming up with solutions to the people living in poverty, living with crime, living with gentrification, living with lack of political rights.
If your solution is to start making the world more like Cuba, count me up as an obstacle.
Economic freedom is freedom. For us all. Let us give as much economic freedom to all our nations as possible. TOGETHER.
The Irony. Tell that to cubans.