Cuba may be having its Berlin Wall moment, people may have to work in order to live

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9/15, "R.I.P. Castro's Cuba," Toronto Sun by Joe Warmington

• "Communism in Cuba is dead.

A lot of people missed it but the Castros this week announced they have thrown in the towel on their failed economic system and are suddenly going to turn on a dime and give private enterprise a shot.

• The first clue came in August when President Raul Castro said in a speech
  

“Cuba will no longer be known as the only country in the world where you do not have to work to live.”

• And now word comes out of Havana of sweeping new changes to the country’s economy — starting with the elimination of 500,000 civil service jobs and the introduction of income tax.

“Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining enterprises with inflated payrolls, losses that pull down our economy and make us counterproductive, generate bad habits and distort worker behaviour,” said a statement by the Cuban Workers’ Central (CTC).

In reaction Havana-based Reuters scribes Marc Frank and Jeff Franks wrote, “the jobs plan was the most significant step so far in a series of reforms by President Raul Castro and the biggest shift toward private enterprise since the 1960s.”

• Perhaps these Castro job cuts could be Cuba’s Berlin Wall turning-point moment?

“It has the potential of being an earthquake,” Florida International University in Miami Cuban expert Marifeli Pérez-Stable told Reuters, adding this is shining a light on the fact “the contract Cubans had with the revolution doesn’t work anymore.”

• Stay tuned because this is what went on prior to the end of the Eastern Bloc’s reign. You’ll notice there was no talk of cutting police or military.

In addition to cutting 500,000 government positions they are planning to grant “250,000 licences for self-employment and creating 200,000 non-state jobs largely by converting state businesses into employee-run co-operatives” where the “self-employed will be able to hire additional workers.”

• It’s a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream being thrust upon a
  

• society that pretends to work while the government pretends to pay them.
  

Remember this is a place with a history of 50 years without capitalism and all of the complications and competitiveness that go with it. They don’t understand it.

If you are going to move to co-operatives, self employment and the creation of 200,000 private sector jobs would you choose a bunch of old, less than capable Communists who got you into this mess in the first place to lead it?

• They can’t seem to run Communism. How are they going to run capitalism — especially in an era where even the smart capitalists around the world are having difficulty doing it themselves.
  

It may also be too late to try to create a China-style slave labour market — and difficult to prosper on when you are subject to trade embargos and unskilled and untrained work force.

No, this thing is heading over a cliff.

Meanwhile things are nasty in Cuba right now. Sun reporter Chris Doucette was down there to cover the Cody LeCompte fiasco and in a drive through the country was stunned at the poverty.

• And Fernando DaSilva, a Torontonian married into a family in Cuba, says its not as safe down there for tourists as it once was. “Things are getting worse,” he said, adding one “rampant” trick being used in the prostitution game is to drug men and steal their money.

Also, says Fernie, “there is high theft of gasoline, livestock, even milk is getting stolen from government warehouses that are destined for infants as hundreds of thousands of thousands of dollars are being spent by the Cuban government to erect a memorial in Las Mercedes to commemorate Castro’s first victory. Unbelievable.”

• How long can it be before the average people stand up to this? And what happens if they do?

Meanwhile the Castro apology people with a straight face call them reforms and not a transformation away from Communism but a modernization of their current system.

• What it really should be called is bankruptcy.
  

• Their system is in the death throes and they know it.

With these job cuts there will not just be fewer people administering the system but a smaller system to administer which means food, health care, education and social assistance will all be affected.

• There is just not enough money for the ideology to work in 2010.
  

Even the father of it admitted that last week himself. “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Fidel Castro told American writer Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic Monthly magazine."...

• via Free Republic