This is mostly propaganda. Cuba’s economy is a mess, and has been since the communist revolution. Furthermore, Cuba’s standard of living had to be propped up by the Soviet Union, and when the Soviet Union collapsed and the subsidies ended, Cuba’s economy shrank 33%. Before the communist revolution, Cuba had a per-capita income higher than some American states. After the revolution, standards of living collapsed, and Cuba became cery poor. In 2011 Cuba started implementing reforms that made the economy more entrepreneurial and about 25% of the economy was sort of market based. The result was that per-capita GDP has almost doubled.
People always point to health care and education as being bright spots in the Cuban economy, and that’s somewhat true. In the case of health care, though, there’s a huge disparity between facilities available for the common person and facilities available to foreigners and the politically connected. Cuba maintains high quality hospitals as a source of hard currency by using them for medical tourism, but average Cuban citizens have a much different experience. The typical failures of supply and demand in a command economy means that Cubans have often bee tasked with bringing their own bedding and even bandages with them to the hospital. Drugs that are in short supply go to the tourist hospitals first, meaning sometimes Cuban citizens go without.
Overall, the Cuban economy has suffered greatly from Communism.
It wasn’t the disparity; it was the distress. People don’t revolt when someone else has a 100x bigger yacht; they revolt when, among other things, their working conditions are dangerous and dehumanizing, they are hungry, and when they see loved ones dying of disease that others are being cured of.
And it has also suffered from US economic sanctions. It’s ironic because if the US had not imposed sanctions upon Cuba, then it could tout how bad communism is relative to capitalism. Instead, a very poor state, enduring economic sanctions from its potentially largest trading partner, gets to tout how much better its healthcare system is.
I think it’s obvious people revolt when they’re hungry, but even those who do not are economically distressed or in perpetual fear of losing whatever property and wealth they have. If everyone around you is losing their job and having to sell their house, that doesn’t affect just the people losing their jobs and homes; it affects you as well. For one thing, there’s a good chance you might be next.
And when people know that there are bankers and CEOs living like kings and asking taxpayers to bail them out to boot, that’s when people begin to question the wisdom of the market. Sure, markets create wealth, but they can also create disparities among people. They can create disproportionate levels of power. Those results by themselves aren’t justifications to end capitalism, but they do demonstrate the need for redistribution of wealth and power. Because as I’ve said, during economic crises, people don’t just lose confidence in free markets, they lose confidence in self-governance. And that’s perhaps the most dangerous consequence of capitalism’s inherent flaws.
But I’m in agreement that, flaws aside, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Embrace capitalism’s strengths and recognize and address its limitations accordingly is what I’m saying. Perfect governance exists nowhere, but other countries have done a better job striking the right balance than we have, with many of our problems emanating from our archaic constitution
Every example you give here is an example of economic distress. As I’ve said in other posts, I’m a firm believer in socialistic interventions to prevent or cure that distress. The only place we differ is that you seem to think wealth disparity, in and of itself, is a problem. You also say that wealth disparity causes power disparity. I completely agree that is true under our current shitty laws, but that is a fault of government, not capitalism. There were large wealth (via perks) and power disparities in the Soviet Union as well.
The reason I think distinguishing between distress and disparity is so critical is because they would require different interventions, and addressing the latter for its own sake would likely have a severe effect on the economy (and therefore wealth for everyone) depending on how far it’s taken. I’m happy to pitch in for someone who is sick, works in unsafe or dehumanizing working conditions, or can’t afford the basics required to live reasonably comfortably. I’m not willing to pitch in so someone can afford the latest iPhone.
I would agree with this.
I’m would think that capitalism, socialism, and even communism work, but when theirs corruption within that system and laws being broken, then yeah, it’s going to fail people.
It’s better to prevent distress in the first place. If we’ve reached the point of distress, we’ve reached the point of desperation. When the Great Depression hit, there were interventions to address the distress, but around that same time there was civil unrest. Before he was a hero in the Pacific, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was best known for brutally suppressing a revolt by veterans demanding their war bonuses. As I mentioned previously, fascism was a relatively mainstream idea at that time. FDR and Huey Long made no bones about their authoritarian leanings, though with FDR we were fortunate to have someone who ultimately believed in moderation. But even with FDR, he had authoritarian impulses: threatening to pack courts was an authoritarian move. It’s better if we don’t get to the point at which we’re so economically and politically desperate that we’re relying on the self-discipline and good character among a slate of authoritarians.
Doesn’t seem to be for lack of trying. From what I can see, they seem to be constantly building in New York. Even over where I live in New Jersey, they have basically built a string of 10-20 story “yuppie ghettos” along the river from Jersey City to Fort Lee.
Most of the new developments don’t seem to be for low-income or even middle class. The condos on the Jersey side are all going for a million each. And the towers they are building in Manhattan are tens of million a peace.
No one seems to want to tear down a block of old waterfront warehouses and replace it with a tower designed to house 100 working class families when you can build one that holds 20 obscenely wealthy ones (assuming they aren’t just being purchased as a place for some Russian or Chinese hedge fund to park money).