Cuba, Greece, and the United States

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Nov. 08, 2011

Well, it seems that Greece and the United States aren’t the only countries that are suffering the consequences of socialism. So is Cuba. But the difference is that unlike Greece and the United States, Cuba seems to be moving in the right direction.

The Cuban regime has just announced that for the first time since the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cubans will be permitted to buy and sell both homes and automobiles. That might not be a big deal to Americans or Greeks, but it is an enormous thing for the Cuban people, who have lived in a country in which the state owns everything.

Cuba’s socialist economic system is really just a logical extension of the American and Greeks welfare states. The welfare state is based on the notion that inequalities of wealth are inherently bad. Thus, the state forcibly takes money from those who own it and redistributes it to those who the state feels need it more. The welfare state is also based on the idea that people cannot be trusted to make the correct charitable decisions. Thus, the state forces people to share their money with the poor and disadvantaged. That’s what such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and education grants are all about.

Fidel Castro simply took those statist precepts to their logical conclusion. Early on, the state took all the money, businesses, and homes of the rich in order to equalize everyone. According to this Associated Press article about the new changes in Cuba, today 80 percent of the Cuban workforce works for the government. The pay rate is $20 a month, which includes free education, free health care, free transportation, and nearly free housing. The best thing, from the statist perspective, is that most everyone is equal, in terms of how poor everyone is.

Reflecting the statist mindset that afflicts so many Americans and Greeks, the new Cuban law does not permit people to own more than one home in the city. Why? Because it would lead to speculative buying and the danger of large concentrations of wealth. Sound familiar?

Read More