“Fidel Castro has admitted for the first time that Cuba’s crumbling economy is not working. The architect of the 1959 revolution told an American journalist that the cash-strapped, state-controlled economy was not an example to export abroad. Asked by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, if the Cuban economic model should be adopted by other countries, the 84-year-old leader replied: ‘The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us any more.” The Times, September 9, 2010
“Cuba is to embark on its biggest economic change since the 1960s, with a million state workers laid off and encouraged to start up private enterprise. The move, announced in Havana last night, means that more than 20 per cent of Cuba’s 4.9 million state workforce will be taken off the public payroll. Instead of being paid 60 per cent of their salary until they are offered another job, as in previous layoffs, they will be encouraged to take up permits to practise trades.” The Times, September 14, 2010
Just imagine, Dear Readers, if those announcements had emanated from Cuba under the presidency of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush! The church bells would have been ringing for capitalism from sea to shining sea, as our nation’s Leader rejoiced in yet another nail in the coffin of the international socialist revolution.
Instead, listen to the deafening silence that emanates from President Obama’s White House. His entire economics team must be in deep mourning at the passing of yet another progressive socialist regime. At the very moment when the President and the Democratic-controlled Congress are driving the United States towards the Cuban economic model, its Creator reneges on the vision.
If only politics operated like an open-window soccer transfer market. The U.S. could trade Barack Obama for El Comandante, returning Cuba to its socialist vision and the United States to laissez-faire capitalism! We could throw in Lawrence Summers, Austan Goolsbee, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke for free as our part of the exchange, and take Raoul Castro as an additional part-exchange.
Tags: another dog that does not bark in the night, Cuba moves to free markets as the US moves to socialism, Fidel Castro moves to the right of Barack Obama
September 15, 2010 at 10:47 pm |
Prof. Rowley
It seems to me and my somewhat limited reading in history that one of the few countries that truly made a giant leap towards free markets is Chile under the dictator Pinochet. So the question is do we have to have a dictatorship to move dramatically in the right direction? Are democracies always moving towards socialism and if so why? (I have my theories but an more interested in what others think)
September 17, 2010 at 7:55 pm |
[...] We could throw in Lawrence Summers, Austan Goolsbee, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke for Read more Friday, September 17th, 2010 [...]