Rules TBD.
I’m not a fan of meme-level infographics of unsourced data.
US unemployment figures virtually never include those who have given up on looking for work, which is a drastic undercounting. Biden’s Misleading Unemployment Statistic
Who knows where the Cuban unemployment figure came from, or how it was calculated or the quality of the data.
Some brief searching of my own tells me that, while the unemployment numbers are roughly correct, the actual pay for those jobs are so low that they have a rough time actually being able to afford anything. Like, minimum wage is 2100 Cuban Pesos per month, but one set of clothing costs about 9700 on average.
https://horizontecubano.law.columbia.edu/news/calculating-cost-living-Cuba
Plenty of people have hard time affording anything in US as well, and lots of people end up working multiple jobs now because jobs don't even pay a living wage.
There’s a world of difference in having a hard time affording things like a car or a home and having a hard time affording food or clothing.
Forget food and clothing, millions of Americans can't even afford to feed themselves https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
And Cuba is even worse so what even is your point?
https://theweek.com/politics/cuba-food-shortage-humanitarian-crisis#
Cuba is a tiny island under a blockade by the burger empire, meanwhile the burger empire has stunning amounts of wealth. Anybody who's not an utter imbecile can understand what the point here is.
Right, let’s ignore things like frequent blackouts (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-turns-off-some-public-lighting-energy-crisis-worsens-2024-03-05/) and the fact that if you protest any decisions by the government you risk being locked up indefinitely (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/cuba)
Surely signs of a stable government
As if the illegal embargo and the power infrastructure issues are unrelated 🙄
Human Rights Watch is part of The Human Rights Concern Troll Industrial Complex whose purpose is facilitating regime change.
Blackouts are certainly a thing, and for the middle class in USA that would be considered intolerable. However, for the poor in the USA who sometimes go without electricity for lack of payment, having access to healthcare and education in exchange for the occasional blackout might be worth the trade.
As for speaking out against the government, citizens may not be incarcerated for speaking out (unless it actually threatens the government such as Manning, Snowden, and Winner), other forms of control are used. Usually that means pervasive propaganda and pitting people against each other through the Culture War.
US has the highest incarceration per capita in the world, and it's far higher than Cuba. Meanwhile, the blockade of Cuba certainly does make things difficult for a small island. The fact that people of Cuba enjoy higher quality of life than Americans in many ways, shows how communism can persevere even under harshest conditions. Not the own you seem to think it is.
Now that’s just blatantly wrong.
Cuba is one of the few countries that is actually higher then the US. Cuba is 794 per 100,000, compared to the United State’s 531
As the chart shows, 36 states have higher incarceration rates than Cuba, the country with the world's second highest prison rate. New York comes in just above Rwanda, which is still trying thousands of people in connection to the 1994 genocide. Even Vermont, birthplace of Phish, Ben & Jerry's, and the country's only socialist senator, imprisons a higher percentage of its population than countries like Israel, Mexico, or Saudi Arabia.
That article is both severely out of date and uses raw numbers instead of per capita. No fucking shit the US is going to have more people in prison when they have 30x the population.
Individual states don't have 30x population, and not sure what makes the article out of date. Not like there's been some drastic prison reforms in Cuba or US in the past decade.
What about freedom of press and expression?
How about USA vs Vietnam?
Let's wish both of them a very pleasant people's revolution in the future
Cuba already had a people's revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is as firm as ever there.
PPP per capita is 5x lower in Cuba than in the US. In other words, salaries are low and people struggle to afford things in Cuba, whereas the average citizen in the US can afford much more.
So they can buy less commodities but generally still manage to live longer lives, are more able to read which means they can pursue intellectual and cultural pursuits, etc?
Sounds like a good trade, I bet it would be an even better trade without the blockade.
I'm not saying life on balance is necessarily worse or better. Just pointing out that cherry-picking statistics can sketch a wrong image.
"Less commodities" sounds a bit dismissive of the difference though. It is significantly less, e.g. the average salary is less than 190 USD per month. Most Cubans struggle to get enough food to get by, and whilst there are measures to avoid starvation, they're not exactly having much to eat either. They're not using their time for intellectual/cultural pursuits, most use their time to find additional sources of income.
Healthcare is free, but the equipment is old. Outcomes are poorer, due to lack of drugs. Cuba has an excellent HIV-program, with mandatory testing and cheap antivirals. Yet, HIV cases (and STIs in general) are on the rise due to a high prevalence of prostitution, caused by the low salaries and high wealth inequality.
Upsides and downsides. Reality is that several hundreds of thousands of Cubans attempt to flee the country every year. Between 2021 and 2023, nearly 500k people tried to do so, ~5% of the population. That's not very indicative of a place-to-be.
It may well be true that the US embargo is causing a lot of these issues. However, economists tend to argue that the lack of Soviet subsidies has a much larger negative effect.
I'm not so sure it's a good trade. There are things we can learn, certainly. But on balance, it doesn't seem better.
You forgot to factor in the cost of housing, healthcare, and education that people in Cuba don't have to worry about.
Sure, but other items cost much more compared to their salaries. It's a definite downside.