What is the crowd's opinion of Cuba: From Economic Take-off to Collapse Under Castro?

From 3.5 billion comments

	

	

	

> # It Pays To Be The Relative Of A Communist Dictator, Especially If His Name's Castro > >
>
> It pays to be the relative of a communist dictator: the granddaughter of former president and current First Secretary of the Communist Party, Raul Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, rents out a fancy mansion in Havana that goes for a pricey $650 a night. > > According to her Airbnb profile, Vilma Rodríguez, who lives in Panama, advertises the mansion as ‘Casa Vida Luxury Holidays” or “Dream Home Luxury Holidays." The Daily Mail reports that Rodriguez describes the four-bedroom home, which boasts two master bedrooms, an outdoor jacuzzi and a private terrace along with private service, thus: > > > In Casa Vida, elegance, design, and tradition come together to create cheerful, spacious, and luminous spaces. Four rooms and [continuous] service provides maximum comfort and makes your stay an unforgettable experience. > > The Daily Mail reported, “People on the island earn an average of just $29 a month. The country's monthly food ration system has forced people to struggle to prepare the simplest of meals that include meats, bread, eggs and other basic foods.” > > As The Heritage Foundation has reported: > > > Cuba’s economic freedom score is 27.8, making its economy the 178th freest in the 2019 Index … Cuba is ranked 31st among 32 countries in the Americas region, and its overall score is well below the regional and world averages. State control of the economy by the nearly bankrupt Cuban government is both pervasive and economically inefficient in one of the world’s last Communist dictatorships. Liberalizing pro-market reforms were adopted nearly a decade ago to raise productivity … Without significant supplies of subsidized oil from nearly bankrupt Venezuela, Cuba’s dysfunctional economy is even more dependent on foreign exchange inflows from emigrants’ remittances and the tourism-generated foreign currency that the regime needs to survive. Low, state-dictated wages trap many workers below the poverty line. > > Mark Milke noted in The Globe and Mail in 2016: > > > Economically, in 1958, Cuba's per-capita GDP was $2,363 (OECD numbers in inflation-adjusted Gheary-Khamis dollars). That put it in the middle of the Latin American "pack." Some countries had higher per-capita incomes (Argentina at $5,698 and Venezuela at $9,816 as examples) and others lower (Brazil and the Dominican Republic at $2,111 and $1,320, respectively). > > > > Post-1959, after a revolution where Fidel Castro promised prosperity, democracy and the restoration of Cuba's 1940 constitution – broken promises all, Cuba is now poor. In 2008, when Mr. Castro officially handed over power to his brother, Raul Castro, Cuba's per-person GDP was just $3,764. Thus, on that measurement, Cuba was in the bottom third of all Latin American countries. > > Jorge Salazar-Carrillo and Andro Nodarse-Leon wrote in their 2015 book, “Cuba: From Economic Take-Off To Collapse Under Castro,” “The country ranks today among the poorer countries in Latin America across most socioeconomic indicators and is no longer anywhere near the far more advanced peer set that it had before the Revolution … The tragedy of Castro’s policies is that they have stunted the country’s growth; if the rate of GDP growth had been higher than 1.5% a year, then GDP today would be twice as high as it now is.”

Owner | Source Code | Stats