Unlike with other quasicommunist or former communist countries, I haven’t been able to find any reliable sources for Cuba’s inequality nowadays. Most published tables don’t include it- their Gini coefficient was 22 in the 1980s (one of the lowest in the world), and it’s probably much higher nowadays, but I doubt it’s 55. Again, though, I have no clue what it is. Cuba’s economy has been growing for most of the last decade though, and they have the second highest human development index in Latin America after Chile.
Right. As a comparison, countries like the US and Canada don’t care if you leave. Obama isn’t shaking in his boots that I might actually find out that things are better in Canada. I’ve been there. It’s nice. It has good things. It has things that are not so good. It’s a free country. But it isn’t a paradise of golden streets and money growing on trees. Since we have free media here, people are able to find out what others have really said about other countries, and we can go and check those countries out. Most of us do come back. But the fact that were are allowed to leave at will and come back whenever we want indicates that the US has a mature and honest attitude about the entire thing.
It’s interesting to note that, in the case of East Germany, you were free to leave the country once you were retired: Retired → not a productive member of society any more → free to go → let the capitalists pay the pension and the medicals bills. It was all about the brain drain.
wiki "Previously, the Cuban government forbid its citizens from leaving or returning to Cuba without first obtaining permission from the government. In a translation by Human Rights Watch, under Cuba’s criminal code, individuals who, “without completing legal formalities, leave or take actions in preparation for leaving the national territory” faced prison sentences of one to three years in prison.[23] From 1985 to 1994 the number of illegal emigrants is estimated to 82,500, with an additional 7,500 up to the mid-2000.[24] Even discussing illegal emigration carried a six-month prison sentence.[25]
However, Law-Decree 302, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba on October 16, 2012, went into effect on January 14, 2013. This immigration law eliminates the need for an exit permit but increases passport costs to 100 CUC, the equivalent of 5 months of average salary."
Forbes magazine clearly has some difficulty distinguishing between “personal wealth” and “state property, administered by the Cuban Government”.
This is not really surprising to me- I’m sure that if the editorial staff of Forbes ran a country, they would use its national wealth to aggrandize themselves. The Cuban government takes a very different view, though. The results are evident in the fact that they have the second highest HDI in Latin America.
That Daily Mail one is a hilariously unapologetic smear job. Lol. Not defending Castro but when a news article is titled “Commie hypocrite lives like a billionaire!” and quotes unnamed underage sex partners, kind of hard to take it seriously.
Who in this thread has apologized for communism? I don’t see anyone apologizing for communism. The closest thing is a criticism of a poorly reasoned Forbes article.
I’ll happily self-identify as a qualified supporter of the Cuban regime, though I don’t see it as anything bad which particularly needs to be ‘apologised’ for. The Cuban revolution made a lot of mistakes, and was wrong about some things, but on balance I think they were better than their enemies, then and now, and have much more good than bad to their credit.
Well, yes, as far as *Communist Dictatorships *go, they aren’t so bad.:rolleyes: But little things like Human rights, they seem to be what people want. They also dont have food, shelter, and other things most people seem to want.
Same deal if you were disabled and couldn’t work; you’d be allowed to “go live with relatives” in West Germany. And on rare occasions troublesome, but prominent dissidents (such as writers) were allowed to travel abroad (ie outside the Eastern Bloc), but then had their citizenship cancelled so they couldn’t return.
IIRC Yugoslavia (socialist, but not really part of the Eastern Bloc) abolished it’s emigration restrictions sometime in the 70s, and actively encouraged citizens to work abroad so they could sent remittances home.