Posted on 07/18/2010 5:29:35 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
HAVANA At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.
President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.
It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force.
"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.
"Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
/src on/Hey dude. Real communism has not been attempted yet./src off/
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In a perverse way that is true because it is human nature that under such a system everyone is motivated to receive according to his needs but no one is motivated to give according to his abilities.
This has been most clearly demonstrated in agricultural settings. Give an experienced farmer a hundred acres on which he is to produce crops to be distributed to all according to need and give him one acre on which everything he produces belongs to him and he will produce more on the one acre than on the hundred acres.
>> Why am I laughing?
We have to laugh. It isn’t time for the alternative...yet.
Mr Ramsbotham wrote: “Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work,” he said.
And it only took three generations of ruined lives, not counting a mountain of corpses, to find it out!
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This statement from Comrade Castro is so deeply rich in tragic irony it leaves me quite sad. Fifty years and three generations have been wasted to prove yet again that, no matter how vigorous and murderously harsh the effort to impose it, the communist theory of a utopian socialist workers’ paradise is a totally unrealistic human social construct.
The Left is a classic and irrefutable example of cognitive dissonance in action.
So, their U-6 equivalent is 20% and our U-6 is 17%. Sounds like we can be equated to Cuba, as we are only 3% less.
If he was loading a gun when he said it, they will soon achieve full employment...
LOL!
After which Obamunists will declare him a selfish, greedy capitalist b@stard and throw him in prison, thus ensuring that he produces nothing at all for anyone.
That is, it was not possible for the communist system to feed itself; they had to rely on producers outside the Iron Curtain for food (grain shipments, etc.), without which they would have likely starved.
Yeah, they finally ran out of other people's money.
Yes, and that's based on 50% labor participation. The US rate is something like 67% -- or at least it was . . .
Yep, brilliant ain’t they?
Actually, that’s what is like in Cuba (switch white in charge and brown for worker). Nobody does any work. It is astonishing. THere are almost no tools — a hammer, scissors, a knife — are all rae implements. Wrapping paper, tape of any kind — barely exists.
They are at the point now where they have run out of salt.
You just described the US Post Office....
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