Posted on 02/24/2015 12:08:56 PM PST by SeekAndFind
As if to unintentionally discredit the phrase "income inequality" as a meaningful indicator of human regress, The New York Times today has a remarkable article lamenting that "As Cuba Shifts Toward Capitalism, Inequality Grows More Visible." Here's a taste:
As Cuba opens the door wider to private enterprise, the gap between the haves and have-nots — and between whites and blacks — that the revolution sought to diminish is growing more evident. […]
Raising the [U.S.] remittance cap, along with allowing more Americans to visit Cuba and other steps toward normal diplomatic relations, will help "support the Cuban people," the Obama administration contends.
But some will enjoy that support more than others. Cuban economists say that whites are 2.5 times more likely than blacks to receive remittances, leaving many in crumbling neighborhoods like Little Swamp nearly invisible in the rise of commerce, especially the restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts that tourists tend to favor.
"Remittances have produced new forms of inequality, particularly racial inequality," said Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the AfroLatin American Research Institute at Harvard University.
Bolding mine, to highlight the vacuousness.
There are two main points, absent from this article, to be made about Castro-era inequality (that is, the inequality that existed long before this year, or this decade). One is that while, yes, the earnings gap within the majority of the population is smaller than that in most capitalist countries, THAT'S BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYONE IS POOR. Why, some might even say that those two facts are related!
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
If your goal is equality of opportunity, enforced equality of outcome is your enemy, because the kinds of strictures the state must place upon human freedom in order to produce that outcome will strangle productive economic activity. As the old saying goes, under communism, everyone has a job, and no one works. The conditions of poverty described in the article—the “crumbling neighborhoods,” the miserable goods available via ration cards, barely livable state wages, jury-rigged electrical wiring and vulnerability to flooding—all of this is a failure of applied communist economics. Which is, let us never stop reminding ourselves, an economics based (in theory anyway) on reducing inequality.
Lol - yes, much better that everyone be poor as poor can be. So long as we’re all equal.
The current misery of the Cuban people is exactly what the left has planned for us. These people believe in the lie of the “Revolution” in one of the most oppressive communist dictatorships on Earth.
Yes they are that evil and stupid.
So, if a Cuban works harder or smarter than other Cubans, he should be denied any reward? If he is one of the left-behind relatives of Cubans who are now U.S. citizens doing well, he should be forbidden to accept a gift from them?
Hey, Times employees...YOU FIRST! Get paid the same no matter how well or poorly you do the job. Don’t take anything from a better-off family member.
The Slimes is owned by the richest man on the planet, a Mexican national by the name of Carlos Slim Helu, worth over 70 billion dollars on any average day.
This in a country where indigenous peasants live in wooden lean to’s in the capitol city, and pushes over 1/4 of its population to the country next door.
The man defines “income inequality”. He’s a criminal who bribed the President of Mexico for the monopoly franchise which guarantees his wealth.
This “newspaper” has no business making any insinuations about wealth inequality anywhere.
Or, we pretend to work; they pretend to pay us.
Defund the NYT.
“Remittances have produced new forms of inequality, particularly racial inequality,” said Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the AfroLatin American Research Institute at Harvard University.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Like that’s new in Castro’s Cuba. What a joke!
NYT editors make much more than reporters, much more than press operators, and much, much more than their janitors. Such income inequity!
The Marxist progs at the NYT want everyone to be equally poor, diseased, and powerless while they, as enlightened beings with the right beliefs, live like kings. The NYT would celebrate rendering America into a $hithole like Cuba.
If their wealth were somehow doubled, the NYT would gripe.
Most of us in Realityville: “I had $100K, now I have $200K! Sweet!”
But in NYT Utopia: “Yeah, but the Millionaire now has 2 million! Damn! Inequality just doubled!”
I read the article. So much stupid it hurts my head.
Here’s a choice quote:
“After the so-called special period of the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into an economic crisis, thousands of desperate people moved from the countryside to Havana without permission, hoping to find work.
Many still live as virtual refugees in their own country, in neighborhoods like Little Swamp, unable to register for government services like ration books because it is almost impossible to change addresses without prior authorization”...
So..... the ACTUAL reason for Little Swamp’s existence is because Cubans don’t even have the freedom to MOVE without government permission. NOT because of capitalism and tourists.
Did I get that right?
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