Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there?
So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.
Some countries were in the same position as USA of assets seized by the regime, but they accepted symbolic paybacks. USA didn't, probably because they didn't like Cuba destabilizing the Caribean region in the Cold War. At the time, they probably believed that the embargo will damage Cuba regime and cause a quick coup, nobody thought that the regime will survive more than a decade.
Through time this has become a political matter (softening the embargo loses votes in USA, specially in Florida; paying back would expose the regime failure in Cuba when the boogeyman is gone), so both sides at political level are very interested in mantaining the embargo. I tend to see politics as a game of staying in power as long as possible, and here we have a Nash equilibrium where trying to end the embargo goes against both parts. Some people believes (I do) that the embargo helps the regime.
There's no "anti-Cuba" lobby: there's a "anti-Castro lobby". Sadly, this lobby believes in the embargo, and sees its lifting as a weak position against Castro regime.
Yes.
Basically few Americans care either way about Cuba, except for the descendants of those who fled the revolution, who are absolutely furious about it. That has a big effect in Florida.
I personally support wealth and income inequality when coupled with social mobility (and a high standard of living at the low end). With that in mind, why do you think it's absurd for both a street cleaner and a brain surgeon to enjoy a middle class lifestyle? I think we both agree neither should be dirt poor, but of course, that's not the only option. I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Both do something important, necessary even, and both benefit society at large.
This comes up frequently here when folks balk at Canadian software engineering wages, which are by Canadian standards solid middle class wages. Compared to America it can be a "pittance" but of course, Canada has much lower wealth and income inequality - and it's because there's a much tighter band of compensation.
Fun stuff to think about.
Really ? Any person without a severe physical disabilities can be a street cleaner - you need very low incentives to generate people capable.
Surgeons take like a decade of training and a small % of the population is even capable of becoming one and there's a demand for their skills.
Software developers create output that potentially has a very non-linear return. Few 1000 people can create software used by billions daily. A few people can develop software that manages billions of $ of assets.
I can’t fathom pointing to a market that cannot compete globally (Canada’s software engineering job market) and somehow thinking it’s impressive. Knocking everyone down to achieve equality is not desirable.
I’m more interested in approaches that provide safety nets and mobility upward. Not ones that eliminate the paths upward.
Because a brain surgeon requires a vastly larger amount of money, effort, training, and time to achieve their skill set.
Much less people would spend all of these resources, and time, becoming brain surgeons, if it was as lowly paid as much easier jobs.
> This comes up frequently here when folks balk at Canadian software engineering wages
I mean, ok. But if you don't care about this mismatch, then don't compain when a large amount of engineers in canada flee for better prospects elsewhere. |
The surgeon will have spent many years studying while the street cleaner can just get started tomorrow.
The surgeon has responsibilities the cleaner does not.
Finally, given equal pay, people may not want to do unpleasant jobs: I'd rather be a poet than a trash collector.
But on the other hand it's somewhat hard to justify someone earning many orders of magnitude more than others.
Your brain surgeons will leave and you will be left with the other guy. Which may be fine for you but many Americans do not want that and consequently find things that would bring that about absurd.
Accumulating wealth has never been a problem in Cuba or anywhere else. The problem is always creating wealth, which is an economic problem, not a currency problem.
The second part of this paragraph feels like a really weird framing of the first part. As far as I can tell:
- workers in what the author considers less-skilled jobs are making more than those in higher skilled jobs
- some workers are quitting to take up these "unskilled" jobs, and it appears they're fully able to do so
On the one hand, it seems the incentives aren't great for people to work in certain professions. On the other, it's kind of hard to argue that there's a fundamental class struggle going on here when a doctor can join the "privileged" class by simply quitting their job and wiping tables. Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).
Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?
But where it gets strange is, when you want to buy dollars for your pesos. To support the fiction of their artificial rate, Argentines were allowed to buy $100 for 300ARS... but only in tiny, tiny quantities. In fact this is what their ATM cards would get them if they traveled to the US. But the max for their entire trip was something like $200 and they had to pay a 100% import duty on everything they purchased abroad.
And now for the knockout punch: If you worked for the government, you could have 20% of your salary converted to USD every month at the official rate.
Where did these cheap dollars come from? The treasury's quickly dwindling strategic dollar reserve. However, in order to keep the government employees at this level, they had to keep the peso at the same official exchange while in reality it devalued more and more.
And where did those dollars out of the treasury go when they got into the hands of government employees? Into banks in Miami.
To be clear, no one worked to get this wealth, it was a favor for being part of the party in power. People who worked got fucked because in the end their life savings in pesos became worthless in any other currency. To stop this from getting out of hand, the government then instituted price controls to keep the price in pesos steady on certain goods produced in the country, mainly beef, bread, etc. But those food producers could make much more selling their produce abroad, and the government had lucrative deals with China and other countries, so they slowly reduced how much food you could buy at these artificially low prices. The stickers on items in the supermarket would show you couldn't buy more than one or two a day. Other items went up in price daily.
This is how a dual currency system bleeds an economy, by funneling most of the citizens' wealth into the bank accounts of a corrupt government elite who do nothing more than manipulate the currency to drain the nation dry.
> It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).
So in communist Central Europe (before 1989) the situation was perhaps similar. Nominally in highest regard were hard blue-collar jobs: miners, workers in metallurgy, mechanical engineering, builders. Many of those jobs also earned much more than doctors, lawyers, managers etc. But the spread between highest and lowest wage was not big. And it was obligatory that everyone has a job.
Because nearly everyone made similar amounts of money, money ceased to be that huge measure of status like it is in 'capitalism'. But that does not mean people stopped measuring and comparing each other: they just found other means to do that. Particularly, connections. There were things money could not buy (at least not legally). But once you knew the right people, much more was possible. So your status was measured with the right connections. And because many basic things were hard to get, particularly valued connections were with people like grocers, butchers, providers of gas pipelines for heating of houses, providers of building materials and building machines (people outside of bigger towns ere mostly building their own houses) etc.
But also good doctors were very valued - not by the offical health system of course, but you were supposed to bring either money or some other valuable gift in return of the favor. The favor being the doctor will see you either at all or do more that the basic necessity mandated by the system.
And of course having a privileged position within the ruling communist party was the best - which is where the concentration of not very nice people was highest.
The result of all this is that now, more than 30 years after the fall of communism, there is still a huge amount of corruption and favoritism in all aspects of the society, but mostly in the state structures.
The problem with positing Bitcoin as the solution is something that this article highlights as the problem with the Cuba's currencies - both Bitcoin and Cuba fiat are incredibly unstable. People living on tight margins in poor economies cannot afford to gamble with their daily cashflow. Every currency fluctuation has a direct effect on their daily living standards, including what they will be able to afford to eat. In the past few months we've seen massive drops in the value of Bitcoin, such as 25% over 10 days and 40% over 14 days. These are the kind of currency devaluations that poor people on very low incomes cannot afford.
The article would have been better if it had talked about cryptocurrency in general, not specifically the one used for financial speculation by millionaires (speculation in which Bitcoin Magazine plays a part in and it's founders & CEO financially benefit from).
Centralized financial networks and stable coins (if we insist on using a blockchain) are more likely to be the answer for these use cases any maybe the hype around Bitcoin helps that but as-is, it's not a good solution for those who would actually benefit from alternative financial networks.
1. supposedly buys bitcoin with the funny money the article complains about, leaves unclear where her disposable income comes from and also how people get bitcoin and why they want funny money if they have bitcoin
2. estimates there are hundreds of thousands of bitcoin users in cuba, people get bitcoin sent by family abroad, businesses which want to interface with foreign companies need to use bitcoin
3. this guy uses bitcoin as an uber eats, food delivered to him and other small conveniences, admits it's very early for bitcoin
This is the famous 10k BTC pizza again, isn't it?
$10 fee on every transaction and an immutable 7tps. LN is joke.
Maybe we (The US) should just lift the embargo?
To put this into perspective, a single bitcoin transaction currently costs $2.3.
How often does Bitcoin need to fail as a currency so that crypto-currency enthusiasts stop pushing the narrative of Bitcoin being a currency?
But maybe if Cuba becomes anarcho-capitalistic, the stupid embargo gets finally lifted /s.
It's the same thing now happening in China. Unfortunately, this mentality and ideology now also finds its home in North America.
