to see socialist squalor equal to Cuba's.
From The American Thinker:
Cuba is an antique car-collector's dream...except that Cubans aren't collecting 1940s and 1950s vehicles -- they're driving them. New cars? A few. But generally, oldies must do. Licenses? Interesting. Socialists say everyone's the same. So why link someone's status to license color? Brown plates, for example, signal a government VIP, blue an inspector-controlled vehicle.
Here's something on Obama's wish list: the civilian security system. In Cuba, it's called the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, or the CDR. Billed initially as an extra security force, "a collective system of revolutionary vigilance," it puts at least one government spy in the neighborhood. And those spies monitor everything. Even an extra bag of groceries is suspect.
Obama's mandatory national service? Alive and well in Cuba. Eighteen-year-olds complete military or social service. (Many believe that this is additional indoctrination.) Those not attending higher education serve two years, while the rest serve only one. In this communal "utopia," there's plenty of discrimination.
Of course, there's free health care, which Cubans (and Michael Moore) are programmed to hype to Americans. They tell you that Fidel brought universal health care. Sounds terrific, right? All services free? Docs earning 250 pesos a month, yet working nonstop? What could be better?
Well...remember that Tylenol? It's a donation to Cuba. Cuba's health care has "minor" glitches like no medicines. There aren't over-the-counter or prescription drugs, vitamins, or supplies like diabetic strips. There's inferior training, doctor shortages, rationed care, and a lack of equipment. (A few years ago, Havana -- a city of 2 ½ million -- had only one MRI machine.) The hospitals are in terrible shape, and the system is economically draining. Actually, some with money might get better care, but they pay under the table.
Cuba boasts the ultimate jobs bill: Everyone's guaranteed work. Of course, it's government employment -- there is almost nothing else. Jobs pay about $250 a month, which won't cover basics. (Many Cubans rely on remittances from U.S. relations to survive.) There's no incentive, nothing really works -- try the toilets -- and innovation is squashed. The government dictates hours...they're long. A taxi driver I met works from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. most days but still can't make ends meet.
2 comments:
There are always at least two indicators of a strong, centrally planned and controlled government: rationed consumption and conscripted labor. Thank you, Thomas Sowell, for the well written books and articles on economics.
Cuban socialism serves as propaganda grist for fiscal-conservative Republicans. (I'm a Republican, but for moral reasons.) One can go to Hong Kong or Japan, and other meccas of unbridled capitalism, and see many poor people living in cages, and that makes the Cuban pictures pale by comparison.
In the US we have our own legacy of unbridled capitalism and unconcern for the education and betterment of the poor. There are the inner cities and the "hoods" that are treated like people zoos for middle class or better "disaster tourists" who cruise the streets with windows rolled up and doors locked. These people zoos are even found in small post-industrial cities of 5,000 to 40,000 and upward.
The people who live in the people zoos can drive out to the exurbs and countryside and see all the McMansions that were built with money that should have went toward their betterment, their education and their health care:
http://www.oneinchpunch.net/2009/12/22/hong-kong-poor-live-in-tiny-cages/
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