{"id":2435,"date":"2009-10-15T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=2435"},"modified":"2009-10-14T13:18:10","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T17:18:10","slug":"moving-in-the-opposite-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=2435","title":{"rendered":"Moving in the Opposite Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the US government takes steps like government controls of major industries and attempting to hijack 1\/5th of the economy via health care reform, another country is moving in quite the opposite direction during this global recession<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cuba’s workplace cafeterias are closing, President Ra\u00fal Castro keeps saying the well-off shouldn’t get the same subsidies as the poor, and now there are rumblings that one of the stalwart vestiges of the revolution — the ration booklet — has outlived its usefulness.<\/p>\n

As the Cuban government struggles through a deep recession, its leaders have begun picking away at socialism in order to save it. But experts say the latest buzz by the Cuban government is simply another desperate fix to stem the slide of a failed economy that buckled long ago.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Since he took office early last year, Ra\u00fal Castro has been saying that the country’s severely battered economy needs fixing. In a widely quoted August speech, Castro said Cuba was spending more than it made.<\/p>\n

“Nobody, no individual nor country, can indefinitely spend more than she or he earns. Two plus two always adds up to four, never five,” he said. “Within the conditions of our imperfect socialism, due to our own shortcomings, two plus two often adds up to three.”<\/p>\n

In the 18 months since he took office, Castro restructured the nation’s agricultural system to give idle land to farmers, hoping they would revive a deeply troubled state-run agricultural industry plagued by inefficiency. He also allowed taxi drivers to have private licenses; many were working illegally anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How do you get farmers to do more farming?\u00a0 Create an incentive to do so, like a profit motive, long reviled by liberals and one of the reasons they believe health insurance needs reform.\u00a0 Socialism costs more than the benefits to society.<\/p>\n

Hugo Chavez was, no doubt, convinced that the oil profits he absconded with would pay for his socialist paradise, but that very socialism chases away the people he soaks off of.\u00a0 Combined with the global recession, food shortages continue in Venezuela’s “paradise”.<\/p>\n

The profit motive gives people an incentive to put their own time & money at risk to provide a service to those who need it.\u00a0 If not enough folks need it, it’s not subsidized by the government (or shouldn’t be); it folds.\u00a0 If it is<\/em> useful to enough people, it prospers, and, rightfully, so does the owner who bore the risk.\u00a0 Wealth is created in this system, not simply “spread around”, as Obama infamously said to Joe the Plumber.<\/p>\n

Wealth was spread around in Venezuela, Cuba, and even Sweden, and now the piper must be paid.\u00a0 In the latter two, changes are being made in a more capitalist direction.\u00a0 Let’s hope Venezuelans learn that lesson.<\/p>\n

Heck, let’s hope American Democrats learn it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the US government takes steps like government controls of major industries and attempting to hijack 1\/5th of the economy via health care reform, another country is moving in quite the opposite direction during this global recession. Cuba’s workplace cafeterias are closing, President Ra\u00fal Castro keeps saying the well-off shouldn’t get the same subsidies as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doug","category-economics-taxes","category-venezuela"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}