What Socialist Economic Policies Have Done for Cuba

"Socialism is, by a very wide margin, the worst disaster in the history of the human race," writes John Hinderaker."Nothing else comes close. It always fails, and it always brings death-dealing totalitarianism in its wake. Socialism is, in essence, rule by a criminal gang. It generally works for members of the gang, but it never works for anyone else."

In City Journal, Michael Totten reports on his visit to “The Last Communist City,” Havana. Cuba has the fascination of a train wreck. Among the country’s most striking features is its rigid caste system. Members of the ruling elite–the criminal gang, i.e. the Communist Party–live in a semi-capitalist bubble and are able to enjoy not just power, but relatively luxurious living conditions. Everyone else bears the full brunt of socialism, and is mired in want and misery:

"Outside its small tourist sector, the rest of [Havana] looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. It’s eerily dark at night, almost entirely free of automobile traffic. I walked for miles through an enormous swath of destruction without seeing a single tourist. Most foreigners don’t know that this other Havana exists, though it makes up most of the city—tourist buses avoid it, as do taxis arriving from the airport. It is filled with people struggling to eke out a life in the ruins. …"

In Cuba, they don’t have a minimum wage: they have a maximum wage. The stupidity of their economic model can hardly be imagined:

"In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage—$20 a month for almost every job in the country. (Professionals such as doctors and lawyers can make a whopping $10 extra a month.) Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble don’t get paid more. ..."

Read Hinderaker's post, When Will They Ever Learn?, for the rest of the story on what socialist economic policies have done to a once thriving island nation and its people.