Comments by "" (@shauncameron8390) on "The Economy of Cuba" video.

  1.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  The Cuban government pays them peanuts.
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  2. Not nearly as badly as the Cuban government and its central planning model.
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  3. Stability doesn't mean much if it's not prospering. North Korea has exactly that. Ditto for Eritrea.
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  4. Socialism kills, clear as day. Even in countries that the US/West left alone or outright supported like Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Romania, etc.
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  5. So does Canada. And Canada is hardly socialist.
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  6.  @gregrodriguez714  <Spend a little time in Cuba.> Not as an ex-pat or tourist but a Cuban citizen.
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  7. It's hilarious how socialism has a way of making a capitalist out of people.
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  8. Not really. He's not leaving out of fear his loved ones would be targeted and harassed by the government.
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  9.  @rickyn.1567  And even Karl Marx himself admitted that socialism cannot work without capitalism to prop it up.
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  10. The US has no obligation to do business with hostile regimes let alone further enrich them.
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  11. And equally hard to do such when the government seized and mismanaged all of the factories and doesn't produce much worth exporting which seems to be the consistent story with every other country that adopted socialism/communism even those that were spared the US/NATO sanctions.
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  12. Venezuela is functionally socialist as private enterprise is all but completely no more, wholesale nationalization, the government controls just about everything, etc.
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  13. But who wants to live like a Cuban?
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  14.  @luanrg  And who told you to take that loan knowing that it has to be paid back?
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  15.  @spaghettimon3851  First end the PCC and command economy.
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  16. Actually, Cuban doctors are at the mercy of their own government just like North Korean laborers. The lack of brain drain is due to fear of themselves or their loved ones being punished by the government if they dare try to defect. LOL @ them being community-minded.
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  17.  @austinblackburn8095  But the Japanese and South Koreans have the longest lifespans in the world.
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  18. How about seeing that the Cuban economy could do without the Cuban government's heavy-handed central planning?
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  19. Imagine what it could do if it wasn't blockaded by its own government.
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  20. Tanzania under Nyerere is proof that socialism cannot flourish even when the US left it alone.
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  21.  @gabrielcollstefoni7765  The Cuban government gets paid off of all of that.
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  22. LOL. Lay off the PCC propaganda, comrade!
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  23. And brought the country to ruin.
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  24. Or their families will get punished.
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  25.  @ki2319  If the cost of living is so cheap, why do they have to work a 2nd job?
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  26. That's nothing compared to the loss of outside aid that kept its borderline non-existent economy afloat during that whole time due to Cuban government repression.
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  27. Because a doctor's job carries more responsibility and risk than a doorman's? Anyone can be a doorman, but not everyone can be a doctor.
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  28. Um. The CIA actually supported Somalia and Siad Barre. Tanzania under Nyerere was left alone. Socialism made Ethiopia under Mengistu the ultimate poster boy for African famine among other things gone wrong with post-colonial Africa.
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  29. No. They just work in hopes to GTFO of Cuba altogether.
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  30.  @SergeyMilitaryRankings  Capitalists have Doctors Without Borders.
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  31. Sure you would. Like the Black Panthers.
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  32.  @SergeyMilitaryRankings  Tanzania wasn't sanctioned to oblivion, yet socialism there failed all the same. Yugoslavia under Broz got US support, yet it still disintegrated.
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  33. Not just that, but also a change in economic model.
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  34. But it is unethical when "Teaching people to get along and improve their community" is done at gun-point. How did that work out for Cambodia?
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  35. LOL. So how did communist Yugoslavia and socialist Somalia manage to get international support?
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  36. @kr tu Apparently, exploitation is wrong when capitalist do it, but perfectly fine when socialists do it.
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  37. @kr tu Exactly. Just like imperialism. Wrong when the West did it, but perfectly fine when the USSR did it and China currently does it. .
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  38. That's not saying much when Cuba has a grand total of 11 million people to the US's 327 million.
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  39. But are you willing to accept restrictions on what and how much you're allowed to have?
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  40.  @Feffdc  But it's heavily restricted.
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  41.  @bane8305  The only embargo that has been effective on Cuba is that of the Cuban government against its own people. And the US embargo is just a reaction to Castro seizing and gutting all the US-built and funded enterprises at the time of La Revolucion.
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  42.  @bane8305  <After WW2 Cuba had a better economy than Belgium, Germany, and Norway> Under Batista. Even a documentary about the history of Afro-Cubans acknowledge that, racial inequality notwithstanding. <if there was no Embargos then they would be prospering as a Country!> Actually if there was no command economy, they would be prospering like old times.
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  43.  @KodakKid  And you're a deluded communist.
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  44. Are they legally allowed to visit Cuba?
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  45. Imagine if they didn't seize all the US-built and funded businesses that brought about the embargo.
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  46.  @yukitakaoni007  Pretty rich from a country that was the 2nd to last in the Americas to abolish slavery.
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  47.  @Cherrypi393  Including the Chairman himself.
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  48. But no jobs and a rather meh economy?
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  49.  @gregrodriguez714  Exactly.
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  50.  @matthew8153  Actually, Puerto Rico was a prize the US won for beating Spain in the Spanish-American War. It wasn't a matter of Spain not wanting it. It was a matter of Spain having to give it up.
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  51.  @magnusorn7313  Meh. Puerto Rico is held back by its corrupt leftist Castro-loving politicians.
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  52. And let Soviet Imperialism have its way?
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  53. India until the 1990's.
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  54. But a Western doctor doesn't have to work a side-job to make ends meet.
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  55. Yes it is flawed. And not all socialist/communist countries that failed were meddled with by the US. And in the cases of Somalia, Yugoslavia and Guyana, they even managed to get US support.
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  56. No they don't. And the US outranks them in overall healthcare.
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  57.  @alexanderballa6152  And they actually supported socialist/communist regimes before. Somalia and Yugoslavia.
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  58.  @vladavuckic5262  LOL. No. They either go to Canada or Mexico.
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  59. Except the government. And people are poor.
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  60.  @schubi128  Except there is barely any running tap water, frequent blackouts and so-so quality food. And a place to live unfit for even an animal.
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  61. Plenty of US support.
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  62. And how can you blame the US embargo and not the Cuba government seizure of US-owned and funded businesses?
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  63.  @Fredreegz  Those IMF stipulations are a result of the failed (often socialist) economic policies that bankrupted the country causing it to run to the IMF in the first place. Case in point: Jamaica under Michael Manley. And he practiced the "democratic socialism" that many leftists advocate.
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  64. For what?
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  65.  @magnusorn7313  Not Tanzania or Somalia or any Eastern European country.
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  66.  @fizzyboy08  Justin Trudeau.
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  67. Yes it is.
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  68.  @Theorychad99  <Yugoslavia did quite well,> With outside money, that is. Until it was cut off and Tito died. <Cuba performs super highly on literacy on healthcare as well as many developed countries.> Yet many Cubans much rather risk their lives to live elsewhere. . <It was not u til Kruschev’s policies > Khrushchev's policies gave the USSR its most prosperous years. <nd US bankrupting the solviets in the cold war arms race u til they went downhill.> By exposing the USSR's economic limitations. <Socialism CAN work > No it can't. And not without capitalism and wholesale suppression of individual freedom (thought, speech, movement, agency, association/assembly, etc.) to prop it up.
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  69. Yet it didn't survive the loss of Russian and Venezuelan aid.
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  70.  @magnusorn7313  Especially their own government.
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  71.  @JoaoSantos-lj3jp  The US didn't owe him a thing.
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  72. LOL. Easy to do if you are financially set and you're not dependent on being a doctor to make ends meet. Or maybe because it's their only legal way of getting out of from under the government's jackboot in hopes to defect at the cost of their families getting punished.
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  73.  @magnusorn7313  Like Albania under Hoxha was?
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  74.  @Stroggoii  Exactly.
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  75. Yet much rather risk their lives and flee for that majority of Latin America.
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  76. Doctors don't get paid well as the Cuban government takes 90% of their earnings.
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  77.  @communistpropagandist4608  Yes they can as they don't have to work a side-job to make ends meet and their salaries are not completely controlled by the government.
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  78.  @communistpropagandist4608  You said US doctors, not US college students. Stick to the topic at hand, tankie!
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  79.  @accordionthief  So you're admitting that higher education should only be for the privileged?
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  80. LOL. Sure you would!
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  81.  @luanrg  How so? Under Batista, Cuba was among the top 5 wealthiest countries in the Americas. <Cuba has 8.4 doctors per 1,000 people, whereas the US has 2.6, according to the world bank.> So? <Oh, and healthcare there is free.> Yet it's under staffed, under-funded, under-supplied and under-equipped.
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  82.  @Sixrabbbit  But they do have to work a side-job as their wages are meager and the local currency isn't worth much.
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  83. Exactly.
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  84.  @magnusorn7313  What's so democratic about one-party rule?
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  85.  @magnusorn7313  In other words, people are not allowed to think for themselves and have a differing (political) opinion. Hence, the crackdown on dissidence.
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  86.  @magnusorn7313  By wholesale suppression of independent thought, speech and action.
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  87. Pretty much.
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  88. In Cuba's case, namely the Castro regime.
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  89. And guess which one the average Cuban has access to.
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  90.  @bane8305  Not in the case of Tanzania, Ethiopia or any Eastern European country.
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  91.  @bane8305  Interestingly, US interference turned out to the best thing to happen to Chile, South Korea and you forgot to mention Ghana in the long run as those countries ended up prospering.
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  92. <It succeeds best in areas where free markets just do not work well - like health, education and defence.> Virtually all free-market countries have all of those. Public infrastructure and services =/= socialism. Try a command economy.
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  93. Not quite in Cuba's case. It's the central planning model.
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  94. How can they when they're in the same boat as that half of the poorer and desperate population?
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  95. Yet interestingly, socialism was the reason why the Caribbean ended up running to the IMF. Case in point: Jamaica under Michael Manley.
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  96.  @SergeyMilitaryRankings  No. That's what happens when communism rules the roost. Mismanagement and repression.
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  97.  @SergeyMilitaryRankings  Speaking of yourself.
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  98.  @quisqueyanguy120  And to top it off, Cuba gets food aid from the very same US that has an embargo on it.
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  99.  @xx_donkeyfucker_xx7910  There was nothing stopping Cuba from replacing them with its own corprations.
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  100. Yeah! Best education system, yet no job market to put it to use in.
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  101. First remove the command economy.
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  102.  @matheusvillela9150  Yet they had no problem obeying imperialist demands from the USSR. LOL
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  103. Which is the result of the cruel and counter-productive effects of Castro seizing all the US-funded and built businesses, never mind destroying the local economy using similar tactics and being host to Soviet nukes.
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  104. Doormen, taxi-drivers, jiniteras, etc. being richer than doctors. and engineers.
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  105. But Cuba's sanctions on its own people are even more unjust in the form of absolute government control.
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  106. Actually, the US's healthcare outranks Cuba's overall. Crime-free life? So does North Korea. Easy to achieve such un a totalitarian regime. Try Switzerland or Japan.
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  107.  @clintonkotzee7271  The "greater good" = the ruling class and the well-connected.
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  108. LOL. Teaching people act selflessly while being selfish itself. Don't you just love champagne socialism?
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  109.  @pera1295  Says you. The Cuban government is what's holding Cuba back, not the sanctions.
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  110.  @pera1295  <your reading comprehension is what's holding you back> Not really. <there are no socialist countries without sanctions to compare.> That's because they either adopted some capitalism and became a "social democracy" or collapsed under their own weight after 1990 when the USSR was no longer around to prop them up. Interestingly, Cuba is propped up by the very same USA it sneers at through food aid and remittances.
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  111. According to a tankie.
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  112.  @TWE_2000  It's just that other countries are no longer interested in doing business with Cuba due to its record of not paying and defaulting on its bills.
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  113. And being propped up by some of the same capitalist countries it mocks.
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  114. Like South Africa?
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  115. Tanzania Somalia Ethiopia Cambodia Romania Hungary Albania USSR East Germany Mongolia Madagascar Benin Republic of Congo Burma Poland Bulgaria
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  116.  @magnusorn7313  Rojava is not a country.
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  117. Exactly.
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  118.  @magnusorn7313  Cuba is a failure.
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  119. Not nearly as greedy as those underworked and overpaid NHS administrators on top of your doctors being overworked and underpaid.
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  120. <Also, Cuba would do way better if USA wasn't blocking them economically for so many decades. Enough of USA's BS and cinism on Cuba.> Actually, Cuba would do way better if the PCC ditched the command economy and allow citizens to earn an honest living. <For instance: construction workers, plumbers, police officers, locksmiths, sportsmen/women, politicians, actors, famous people that got popular just for their sexual affairs, etc. > Yet hardly any of them have to work a 2nd to make ends meet as their salaries are decent enough to live on and they're free to work in another profession.
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  121. <Good on these Cuban doctors for choosing to be doctors for the right reasons.> Largely in hopes to GTFO of Cuba once the government sends them out on one of those humanitarian missions.
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  122.  @Feffdc  Thanks to the black market, remittance payments from exiled relatives, tourism, the government pimping out its doctors to other countries, etc.
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  123.  @misterharryman  Being better than the absolute worst isn't anything to brag about or much of an accomplishment worthy of praise. Cuba being better than Haiti (by the way is anything but capitalist), Honduras, Guatemala is not saying anything. And the OP left out fellow socialist Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the Americas.
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  124.  @quisqueyanguy120  Not Guatemala. Try Costa Rica or Panama. Or even Mexico.
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  125. Capitalist reforms under Deng in the early 1980's along with Clinton's free trade deal in the 1990's.
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  126. Exactly.
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  127. In the Kardashians' case, they're the offspring of a successful lawyer.
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  128. Nearly all the money went to the regime.
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  129. They're poor because of communism. By they way, Cuba gets food aid and remittances from the USA.
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  130. The black market and access to foreign currency.
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  131. Government affiliation.
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  132. And yet in spite of the sanctions, Iran isn't starving or anywhere nearly as badly off as Cuba is.
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  133. <So where go the rest of $98+ billion?> The bank accounts of PCC elites.
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  134.  @magnusorn7313  Not really. The people of the DDR voluntarily chose to flee for the West as they wanted nothing to do with socialism. You just have a hard time believing or accepting the fact that people especially those with talent and ambition genuinely want nothing to do with socialism and would rather risk their lives to live in a capitalist society that allows them reach their fullest potential.
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  135.  @magnusorn7313  Thanks to US remittances, Canadian tourism and free Venezuelan oil.
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  136. It is outdated not to mention inefficient.
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  137. LOL.
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  138.  @rfvtgbzhn  Which Cuba actually achieved under Batista.
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  139.  @rfvtgbzhn  Yet they have to wait hours in long bread-lines just basic food. Yet they have to work a side-job, because their wages and whatever benefits they get from the government are too meager to live off of.
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  140. Exactly.
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  141.  @KitoAkari1612  Only if they adopt some capitalist economic reforms like China and Vietnam did.
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  142.  @GaelicStallion  Nope. This communism. Revolutionaries become the new oligarchs and the people are every bit as expendable.
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  143. What about the seizing of all the US-funded and built businesses along with hosting Soviet nukes that brought it about?
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  144.  @KitoAkari1612  Maybe when the Cuban government lift theirs against its own citizens first.
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  145.  @KitoAkari1612  But the differences are negligible and the results are more or less the same.
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  146.  @patrickbateman529  Exactly. It might have allowed some private enterprise to pop up, but the economy is still state-controlled.
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  147.  @KitoAkari1612  Barely as the government still controls the economy.
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  148.  @KitoAkari1612  <Communism is the part that completely abolishes the need of a government, as it's a classless, moneyless society.> Like post-socialist Somalia only after Barre was forcibly removed?
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  149.  @KitoAkari1612  <No. It still has private sector> And that would be? Post-socialist Somalia had it. A classless (every man for himself), moneyless (it had no functional economy) society.
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  150.  @KitoAkari1612  Because Vietnam adopted some capitalist reforms and liberalized the economy.
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  151. But anyone can be a janitor. Not everyone can be a bank employee.
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  152.  @downsouth1678  But not everyone is smart or have the same abilities.
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  153. Socialism is bad. And the West has immigrants from those "worker's paradises" who can attest to that. There are people who value freedom more than free stuff.
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  154. Don't be naive. Cuba's system has little to do with improving the quality of life for its citizens and everything to do with the government trying to maintain absolute control at all costs.
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  155. <People believe economic growth is the solution to everything,> It is as even Marx said that countries that forego such are just condemning themselves to obsolescence and irrelevance.
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  156.  @longnewton1  But not everyone is interested in living destitute especially by force just to test that theory out.
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  157.  @longnewton1  It's not all that ridiculous. That's pretty much the average North Korean.
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  158. @Johan Liebert It figures.
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  159. Especially Quebecers.
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  160. Or harass their loved ones.
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  161. Cuba post-communism - kleptocratic crumbling squatter camp.
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  162.  Mark Collins  Fidel died a multi-millionaire, but yeah!
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  163. Take it up with the government that employs those teachers.
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  164.  Symon Mailhot  Nope. Most socialist/communist nations are closed-off.
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  165. <They would loose their free time, government benefits, holidays, free health care and education for their children, social security, low level of crime, and, of course, they would be loosing those lovely Cuban beaches and great Cuban weather.> LOL. A doctor working in the US enjoys all of what you said on top of a good salary. Plus, they have the option of living in California and Florida with the latter having lower living costs.
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  166. <With socialism, the government can provide services, basic and more than basic needs for free, wich cannot happen in a capitalist country.> But of mediocre at best quality not to mention being under-staffed, under-funded and under-equipped/supplied with deteriorating infrastructure to boot.
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  167. Same as the USSR to Eastern Europe.
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  168. A different economic system with a proven track record of failure even in countries that didn't get embargoed if they were not outright supported by the very same US like Tanzania, Yugoslavia and Somalia.
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  169. Exactly.
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  170. Along with the government threatening to do harm to their loved ones if they dare defect.
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  171.  @KitoAkari1612  And collect some 90% of their earnings.
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  172.  @KitoAkari1612  Yes.
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  173. LOL.
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  174. Half of them being Quebecers.
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  175.  @magnusorn7313  Tanzania under Nyerere was allowed to exist. And still collapsed anyway.
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  176. Working for who exactly? Certainly not the average Cuban.
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  177. Largely of its own doing. Who told Castro to seize and gut all the US-built and funded private businesses? Who told him to kill off all the farmers and entrepreneurs rendering the country unable to support itself depending on outsiders including the very same US for food?
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  178.  @vic1sch  You do realize that the lack of sanctions will just further enrich the regime with the population still suffering anyway..
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  179. <And the doctors do part time dolar earning job for better benifits in cuba. Everything is not profit driven> What better benefits? The benefits are meager which is why they even work a 2nd job in the first place.
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  180. The farmland? Simple. Less efficiency. Less productivity. Shortages. See: Zimbabwe under Mugabe, China under Mao, USSR under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot, North Korea under Kim Il-Sung, or Tanzania under Nyerere.
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  181. So much a triumph that citizens want out by the hundreds of thousands risking death and homelessness abroad.
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  182. Just like there's no mention from you Castro's seizing of US-built and funded private enterprises that brought about the embargoes in the first place.
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  183.  @thinkpad20  LOL. No. He seized them and let them crumble and go infertile destroying Cuba's ability to support itself in the process. Serve what Cuban people?
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  184. Because Cuba's certification is of low standard. Actually, it's because aside from international missions, Cuban doctors are not allowed to leave.
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  185. Cuba's national IQ is 85.
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  186.  @ngpdreamteam2k4  Doctors are not millionaires in the US, but they're definitely doing better than doctors in Cuba.
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  187. While it's perfectly fine for government officials to have it all and live it up.
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  188. Just like it was the USA that built Cuba's economy.
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  189.  @transparent6842  <Where people rule and not trans-national capital.> Well, Cuba Romania Albania Guyana Hungary USSR China (Mao-era) Cambodia Mongolia Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia Bulgaria Tanzania Ethiopia Somalia Benin Zimbabwe Venezuela North Korea (East) Germany Poland Guinea Mozambique actually lived that other world you so advocate. And the results were rather flattering.
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  190.  @transparent6842  For more or less the same reasons why Albania had military bunkers yet its biggest threat was fellow communist Yugoslavia, not any of the NATO countries across the sea.
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  191. Considering that Cuba is anything but developed.
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  192. Not according to the thousands of Jamaicans who happily moved in when Batista ran the show.
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  193. What private job? Cuba hardly has any private industry so to speak.
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  194. LOL. Is that a joke?
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  195.  @陈芹-y9j  But no jobs or economy to put said higher education to good use in.
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  196. Self-sustaining only because of the black market, remittance payments from exiled relatives and favors from other countries.
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