Peter LinkOver 5 Million Turn Out for May Day in Cuba
expatriado50% of the population, that’s massive
iktAt this point, I’d trade Cuba’s government for the United States.
edit: deleted posts, sorry guys it’s just too much to get a flood of people come at me, there’s no time to respond to all of them and quite frankly I try to avoid talking about the US anyway
Most of the issues with Cuba’s poverty stems from sanctions. Those sanctions are in nobody’s interest except a few Cuban expats in Florida. Who at this point are the descendents of people who were kicked out for largely good reasons.
As for human rights abuses, we don’t even need to make the comparison between the US and Cuba on that one.
SkilurosThis sounds awfully simplistic.
“What about the US?” is not a real arguement. We are discussing Cuba, not the US, Botswana or Uruguay.
The Cuban regime is brutal and authoritarian we minimal respect for human rights.
pelespiritBut they still have free healthcare. You can walk off a plane in Cuba and get healthcare. It might be shit healthcare, but poor people in the US have shit healthcare too in Republican states.
So what? There are countries that have free healthcare and also have a democratic political system and aren’t run as a brutal dictatorship.
You keep doing the “but what about the US?”, thing. We are not discussing the US, we are discussing Cuba.
You keep doing the “but what about the US?”, thing. We are not discussing the US, we are discussing Cuba.
I’m not OP, that was my first comment. Also, we can compare Cuba and the US right now because we’re going authoritarian and they’re already authoritarian. It’s interesting that they have some things better than us.
Nah there’s also plenty of mismanagement, in particular spending the cold war being a one product economy and thinking that the USSR will be around forever, overpaying for sugar and sending industrial goods in return.
Venezuela messing up royally and not being able to subsidise Cuba with their oil any more is a more recent problem, but pretty much the same pattern.
Cubans are masters of improvisation and the party is smart enough not to interfere with the people’s capacity to self-organise to get around acute problems, unlike Americans and Russians they don’t micro-manage for the sake of micro-managing, but they’re very much not masters of strategic planning.
Over long, better short, Cuba has to increase its value-add and labour productivity. Export fewer resources, more and most of all more high-value finished products, also become energy independent. It’s nice that they can help out Venezuela with toilet paper but truth be told it’s not really a product that’s highly sought after on the world market because by and large, countries are better at not fucking up their economy than Venezuela.
Or, differently put: Wake me when Cuba exports electric buses. That, preferably, look weirdly like 40s, 50s American cars, in a retrofuturistic way. Or something more niche, but have something that’s not rum, tobacco, or honey. Oh, pharmaceuticals, gotta give them that.
Saving this for November 2026 when a “something” happens to where elections will be delayed
queermunist she/herThe poverty is the result of the US economic siege war, don’t pretend like they did it to themselves.