gutter poor? The latest Economist has Argentina at $13,000 plus per capita income ppp and the CIA World Fact Book at…
[quote]GDP - per capita (PPP):
$13,700 (2005 est.) [/quote]
Meanwhile… just some facts…
[quote][Cuba] is now slowly recovering from a severe economic recession in 1990, following the withdrawal of former
Soviet subsidies, worth $4 billion to $6 billion annually
.[/quote]
[quote]Exports - partners:
Netherlands 22.7%, Canada 20.6%, China 7.7%, Russia 7.5%, Spain 6.4%, Venezuela 4.4% (2004)
Imports:
$6.916 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.)
Imports - commodities:
petroleum, food, machinery and equipment, chemicals
Imports - partners:
Spain 14.7%, Venezuela 13.5%, US 11%, China 8.9%, Canada 6.4%, Italy 6.2%, Mexico 4.9% (2004) [/quote]
Looking this over, it certainly seems that inability to trade is hardly an explanation for Cuba’s poor economic performance and look even 11 percent of its imports come from the US!!! some embargo…
So please explain how I am an ideological snake? I blame Argentina’s lack of economic development equally on clap-trap socialist-populist theories that have been the bane of Latin America’s existence.
Just because Batista was removed does not mean that I have to like the regime that followed. It is almost exactly the same template as occurred in Soviet Russia and Iran. Okay, so some dictator who was not perfect was removed and rightly so but look at what came after. Surely, I can be even harsher in my condemnation of what followed given the far more egregious behavior that occured? Surely, it is a matter of looking at an objective scale and measuring?
AND let’s look once again at the startling figures reported by the United Nations in 1957…
[quote]Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957 that dispels the fantasies of pre-Castro Cuba still cherished by America’s most prestigious academics and its most learned film critics: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class,” it starts. "Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers.
Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage then in the U.S."
[quote]In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. [/quote]Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950’s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco. Cuba had established an 8 hour work-day in 1933 – five years before FDR’s New Dealers got around to it. Add to this: one months paid vacation. The much-lauded (by liberals) Social-Democracies of Western Europe didn’t manage this until 30 years later.
Cuba, a country 71% white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years before Rosa Parks was dragged off that Birmingham bus and handcuffed. In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the U.S. [/quote]