Now you're being disingenuous, Dann. Beeps was taking issue with the following statement you made:
(..)
So Beeps cited you the economic figures for the nations "in the region." Those figures show every country "in the region" doing better than Cuba, except Haiti, Nicaragua and Honduras.
And you're complaining because he didn't provide you a list of "wealthy" nations? What a straw man!
No, I’m not being disingenuous. And, no, it’s not a strawman. Let’s look at the claims BPSCG has made, but first your own fact sheet:
Should we compare
life expectancies? All of Latin America falls in the 75 year range, as does Cuba. All well within any margin of error. So that's no help.
But the income measurements show that as economic well-being goes, Cuba is the 4th worst economy in the region.
So, even assuming "wretched poverty ... afflicts every single country" in the region, it appears to afflict Cuba much worse. Yet, your quote seems to indicate that Cuba is relatively well-off compared to its neightbors.
By what measurement? It doesn't seem to be doing "better than most" in any measurement I can find.
If Cuba, a country fighting with the loss of its former allies and the aid it received from them as well as with the US blockade, is the fourth worst economy in the region, and maybe it is, I still find it hard to see how you can draw conclusions like this:
Get it through your head: Communism causes poverty by criminalizing the profit motive. There is no surer recipe for destroying wealth apart from embarking on a course of total war.
There appear to be
other recipes for destroying wealth which don’t depend on communism if other countries in the region are indeed poorer than Cuba without ever having been influenced by either communist or socialist ‘experiments’ – or by
“a course of total war”.
Oh? Who is Cuba doing better than? You mentioned Haiti earlier; interesting that you have to dig up what is possibly the poorest country in the world to prove that Cuba isn't doing so badly. That's like claiming you're pretty athletic, compared to Stephen Hawking.
If we look strictly at average per capita income, there appear to be other countries in the region afflicted by neither blockade nor communism that are doing worse than Cuba, right?
What I find far more interesting, however, is that Cuba – in spite of the relative poverty of the
country – is still able to keep in check the poverty of its citizens: compare things like education, health care and social benefits in Cuba with countries that are doing better
”per capita GDP”-wise. For some reason socialism doesn’t seem capable of creating the examples of
abject poverty that capitalism is – often
right next to an abundance of wealth.
My problem with communism is that it's a catastrophically failed experiment and historically has only been able to keep going because the governments that instituted it stayed in power by killing - literally - any opposition.
I think that
“killing – literally – any opposition” is something that the Americans and their allies in Latin America have been far better at than socialist Cuba, but somehow the killings in Latin America (and the millions killed by direct US interference in South East Asia) never seem to reflect on
capitalism, does it?
By the way, I never asked BPSCG for a list of countries
wealthier than Cuba, but for a list of actually
wealthy countries in the region:
In the meantime I'll be waiting for your list of wealthy Latin American countries ..... Did you say Mexico?
I was not the one who mentioned Haita, but I quoted someone who did. It is funny that this comparison never occurs to you when Cubans are trying to get into the USA. Then it is never people from a poor country trying to get into a rich one. It is always people fleeing from Communism to Capitalism!
Which other ones? Why don't you instead compare health care, education and social benefits in Cuba with other poor countries?
No, that's right, you'd rather do the Stephen-Hawking comparison ...
It would seem that having a US supported dictator run your country according to the rules of capitalism is not very conducive to affluence either, so I think that I will stick with what you quoted me for, marksman:
From what I’ve heard from other people who have been to both Cuba and other Latin American countries, ”the wretched poverty that afflicts every single country” in that region does not seem to be caused by Communism or as you would put it ” by criminalizing the profit motive.” You may think that ”There is no surer recipe for destroying wealth apart from embarking on a course of total war”, but capitalism appears to be a pretty sure thing when it comes to destroying wealth for the masses living in Third-World countries.
Cuba, a country putting up a fight against both US domination of the region and the US blockade, seems to be doing better than most, all things considered.
But I never expected BPSCG to consider all things.
And all in all I think that I would rather be poor in Cuba, a poor country in the Americas, than be
poor in the richest country of them all.
