I'm fascinated by the comment section to this Brad DeLong post, in which many of the commenters struggle to redefine poverty so that it excludes Cuba. Most of the arguments are daft. I'm particularly floored by the people arguing that begging and prostitution are not a result of poverty, but rather of Cuba's currency controls--as if not being able to earn enough money to live on is somehow different and better if your plight is the direct result of a government edict.
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That's an awful lot of people disputing something we've been told no one is disputing. Even taking account of the fact that, as usual, about 2/3 of those people are "anne".
Another possible factor is that it's really tiresome to listen to people say, for the zillionth time, that command economies don't work and Cuba is poor, as if this is some kind of revelation or insight. At some point you start to want to say "No, Cubans are billionaires and Americans are beggars."
The relative poverty issue is important, but I was thinking about this while watching the first season of "The Wire" earlier tonight (finally available in Hanoi DVD shops), and there's a scene in Episode 5 that feels quite realistic, straight out of "Random Family": a 16-year-old low-level soldier in D'Angelo's drug crew turns out to be running an entire family of parentless kids, doling out bags of corn chips for breakfast, in a dishevelled and ratty apartment with about 12 teen and preteen kids sleeping on mattresses and sofas. The apartment contains a few serviceable color TVs and the drug soldier's income is probably several hundred dollars a week. Does that mean they're richer than the average working-class Cuban family? If you're using a metric that tells you the answer is "yes", then I think we need to disaggregate our use of the word "poor" into international and national contexts, because it doesn't make any sense to adopt a definition of poverty based on global dollar-value norms that would define Baltimore public-housing projects as "rich".
brooksfoe,
Who has described, or would describe this fictional family as rich? I think most can agree that the very poorest in the US, and the very poorest in Cuba are likely equally poor, but that isn't really relevant to the point about relative poverty that is being made. The point is that the bottom 5% of the US is quite a bit wealthier than the bottom 5% in Cuba, and the bottom 20% are wealthier than the bottom 20% in Cuba by an even greater degree, and so forth until you reach the point where the top 75% of Americans is significantly wealthier than all but the top fraction of a percent of Cubans. This really shouldn't be controversial.
If being told for the zillionth time that nearly all Cubans are poor is tiresome, what does that make being told for the 10 zillionth time that some Americans are poor?
Defining that poverty in terms of squalor rather than lack of stuff, on the other hand, makes a refreshing change of pace.
Yes, those who will claim that the poorest of the poor in the US are better off than the poor in Cuba, would never be willing to life on the level of the average Cuban.They who defend Cuba with that argument are more accustomed to living as Fidel does. Rations are great for them, just like the zombies in Berserkley who thought that the ration of a pound a day of rice was great for North Vietnam.
Actually, Yancey, I'd be willing to stipulate that the poorest of the poor in Cuba are poorer than the poorest of the poor in the US, in strictly material terms. I mean, if you look at the bottom 5% of Cubans, they probably live in plywood or adobe shacks with tin roofs, right? Dirt floors, hammocks, flip-flops, and maybe a transistor radio and a bicycle if lucky? I doubt 1% of the US's population has so little in terms of possessions. But they have access to primary health care, their infant mortality rates are probably lower than the lowest 5% of the US's population, and they might even have higher literacy rates. And I would bet they're not despised, and that you can see that if you compare the way they carry themselves, to the way poor Americans carry themselves.
I wonder whether anyone has tried studying how much time poor people in the US spend with their eyes looking at the floor or shifting around without meeting people's glances, versus the similar stat for various people from third-world countries. Poor people in the US act the way discriminated-against castes or ethnicities act in third-world countries.
brooksfoe,
When I wrote "the very poorest", I certainly wasn't talking about a fraction even approaching 5% of the population- I was talking about a group probably no bigger than a 100,000 people in the United States.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't even know what to make of it. We do have Medicaid in this country, and it most certainly covers the lowest 5% of the population, and then some, so it is not a fact that such Americans have no access to primary medical care.
And where is this evidence that Americans despise the poor? For every one that I see, I can find thousands of others that do not. However, how one carries oneself is a personal responsibility. If the poor in the US do as you say (and I don't even accept that assertion), it would no doubt be due to the fact that they view themselves as being very different from most everyone else- a situation that certainly would not apply in a place like Cuba where nearly everyone is poor.
What is this debate really about? Is this a "Mussolini made the trains run on time" kind of argument? The poverty of Cuba is self-inflicted by its long-time ruler, Castro. The fact that he may have thrown the people a few valuable crumbs while destroying their economy doesn't justify the repression and destruction.
If Castro really wanted to help his people, he could have had high literacy rates and universal health care without putting them all on near-starvation diets and cutting off access to the outside world. It's not as if the poverty Castro has inflicted was necessary in order to achieve his few accomplishments - Cubans could have had it all, but Castro wouldn't let them.
brooksfoe,
But they have access to primary health care,
So does the bottom 1% of the U.S. population. Far superior primary health care than is available to the bottom 1% of Cuba's population. All or virtually all members of bottom 1% of the U.S. population are eligible for Medicaid and/or other government health care programs, and any that are not would still be able to obtain high-quality primary health care for free through a large network of clinics and health care centers around the country.
their infant mortality rates are probably lower than the lowest 5% of the US's population, and they might even have higher literacy rates.
I think both these assertions are very unlikely to be true.
And your "eyes looking at the floor" business is even more bizarre. I know you said you live in Vietnam. Have you ever lived in the U.S., or even spent a significant amount of time here? Because you have some truly nutty ideas about people's lives in this country.
Brooksfoe, how many of these poor miserable downtrodden Americans want to emigrate to Cuba?
For that matter, how many poor miserable downtrodden Mexicans want to emigrate to Cuba?
The Cuban poor may have a better literacy rate - given how bad many US schools are it would not shock me - but who cares when you can't afford books, many books are banned and there are no good jobs in which one can exercise that literacy?
I also recall that the way the US calculates infant mortality tends to hurt it in comparison, but was a function of the fact that heroic measures are often used and therefor you get a dead baby instead of a dead fetus (ie miscarriage) which would not count as infant mortality.
Definition of poverty level: income below 60% of national average. (Defined somewhere by the UN or such busy bodies.)
Thus, no matter how rich the people of the US are, there are always "poor". If the average income is $100,000, those who earn $39,999 are poor. In Cuba, for that matter, North Korea, the national average, e.g. $1000, the lowest earners earn $500, more than 60% of national average. Presto, no poor in Cuba or North Korea.
Poor people in the US act the way discriminated-against castes or ethnicities act in third-world countries.
Really?
REALLY?
Next you'll be telling us you have poor friends!
Brooksfoe is playing the noble savage card. Somebody on a different blog made a great point about how REALLY destitute communities may actually appear better off then they are. They arent living in run down buildings because nobody has built anything there in 200 years, their villages may seem like charming throwbacks by comparison. Their pastoral setting belies abject hunger and subsistance farming. The poorest of the poor in cuba I guaruntee you dont have a weight problem like they do in the US... or rather they have an underweight problem. Malnutrition comes from not having enough to eat in the absolute sense- not spending food stamps on poptarts.
Moreover, the interesting thing about the very poorest Cubans is that the government has _intentionally_ made them that way. Its a punishment in a socialist nation. You cross the government you lose your job.
Oops, I was wrong about 60% of average national income.
Here is the measurement: The main poverty line used in the OECD and the European Union is a relative poverty measure based on "economic distance", a level of income set at 50% of the median household income.
http://www.answers.com/topic/measuring-poverty?cat=travel
Here was my personal favorite from the Delong comments -- off the "poverty" thread of discussion, but a doozy nonetheless:
"USA intelligence agencies could learn a lot from the Cuban intelligence agenices [sic]"
I'll bet.
I'd imagine their interrogation techniques make what goes on over the fence in Gitmo look like a Cub Scout pack meeting skit by comparison.
I can't believe a presumably college-educated person wrote that in earnest.
Ms. McArdle expresses fascination with how on another site "many of the commenters struggle to redefine poverty so that it excludes Cuba".
After which some of her commenters struggle to redefine poverty such that it includes the United States.
"Daft" indeed.
Soon Castro will be dead, and the truth about the supposed universal health care and 99% literacy rates will come out (which is that they're as real as the 160-year-olds in Soviet Georgia, remember them?), and all the lefties will change the subject.
"At some point you start to want to say "No, Cubans are billionaires and Americans are beggars."
Speak for your self. Communism does not work at any level. Cuba is not the first or only proof of that. And Cuba is a police state. jbolg had that right.
Successive American Presidents D & R, have failed the Cuban people by not enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. The time has come. Send in the Marines!
Even as a canard "universal healthcare" is a clumsy farce. Certainly every Cuban citizen has the right to walk into a clinic but what is in that clinic? Damn near nothing for the average Cuban. But we are at least all in the same boat, right? Oh, wrong. Not only is there a seperate and quite UNequal healthcare system for Commie hacks, there is an UBER system that ferries Cuba's top dogs around the globe for the very latest in medical technology. In short, the Cuban system is all the things the Castroites and other Lefties claim the US system is; inadequate, unfair, arbitrary, dehumanizing and dangerous. It is also, in fact, quite filthy. Yes, there is universal access to THAT.
I love making socialists look silly.
The biggest world event of the last 20 years is the stunning failure of socialism.
The more socialist a country, the more the smart people go elsewhere (if permitted).
This single funny picture summarizes the effects of socialism on the mind, and hence visage.
And more on the "At some point you start to want to say "No, Cubans are billionaires and Americans are beggars" thing: Sure, maybe one might feel that contrarian impulse. But to give in to it, especially in the face of its own ridiculousness, is acting like a six-year-old.
No matter what, the true measure of a country is the delta between how many want out and how many want in.
Cuba has to forcibly keep its people from leaving to go to America.
America struggles to keep millions of illegals out.
When poor Americans are leaving to move to Canada or Western Europe en masse, let along Cuba, then the anti-US idiots may have a leg to stand on.
Why are inner-city African Americans not moving to Canada, let alone Cuba?
I'd just like to chime in and stipulate that Cuba is poor not because it's a third world country or because of the natives. Cuba is poor simply and only because of the regime that has remained in power for half a century. Pre-castro Cuba was never considered a "third world" country. As far as the Cubans go, if a guy can turn a 63 Chevy into a boat and sail off to the US - only to be caught by the US Coast Guard and repatriated, then turn around and turn an 58 Buick into a boat and sail off to the US once again, it defintely makes a few statements: first, the man is a genius and determined and Second: he sure wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.
Mick G. nails it. When the walls come down the lies about Cuban health care and literacy will be exposed. The MSM will ignore the story.
Who can despute that Cubans are billionaires? The best-known Cuban, Fidel Castro, is a billionare. Socialims does NOT always fail.
No one can really dispute that Cubans are billionaires. The best-known Cuban, Fidel Castro, is a billionare. Socialims does NOT always fail.
DeLong should rename his site "Grasping Futility With Both Hands."
And as anyone who has tried to leave comments over there, they have a habit of quickly disappearing into a large sucking hole ...
U.S. prisons have better health care and literacy programs than Cuba. Of course, they're still prisons.
Under Castro, the Cubans have health care without medicine and literacy without books.
And recall, Cuba had the highest literacy rate in Latin America when Castro took over in 1959, promising reforms and free elections.
I, too, can't wait to see who was in charge of Cuba's health statistics under Castro. Obviously, Castro saw the real numbers. When he got sick, he called in a doctor from Spain.
From there archives, here is when The Futurist called Brad DeLong into the parking lot, on a debate about which political ideology immigrants should embrace. Look at the comments to see how long DeLong lasted in the debate, where he doesn't have the power to delete comments that outsmart him.
I love the "infant mortality rates" comparisons. One thing to note is that those rates are 1) self reported by the countries, 2) no international standard for calculating the rate.
Many, many countries--including Cuba--use a measure that doesn't count infants dying under 1 year of age whereas the US counts those not living beyond a few hours.
Regarding the infant mortality canard: The US uses a different definition for infant mortality than most other countries, including industrialized countries. Premature infants who aren't rescued through heroic measures in the US are counted as dead infants. In most countries, they are considered stillborn.
Thank you, caveat bettor, for mentioning De Long's totalitarian streak. I, too, have had perfectly civil comments deleted over there, for no better reason than he disagreed with them. Oh, and then his buddies started calling me obscene names. [The debate was all about who had the the better organizational skills to aid Katrina victims, businesses like Wal-Mart or unionized bureaucracies like those "run" (presided over) by Nagin, Blanco and Brown. I defended the dreaded private sector. I was then anathematized...] He and his acolytes clearly love Castro's Cuba because they identify with the tenured, unelected, unaccountable "experts" (i.e., the Vanguard of the Proletariat) who run it. They would like to bring that ever-so-wonderful system to the USA. I think they should be ignored, or better, shunned.
63 Chevy...
58 Buick...
Get the hell out of Dodge?
Oh, Chrysler!
The proof is in the pudding, as they say
Communists societies have to build walls to keep people in while America has to build fences to keep people out. The Soviet Union and East Germany were the same as Cuba.
Cuba, like the East Germans and Soviets had to restrict the travel of their sports teams and players because of the fear of defections. America says if you think you can do better or have a better life somewhere else, go for it.
Think of all the Berserkers who have toiled for years even to death from the 60s telling us about the wonders of communism but the could have had it all just for the price of airline ticket. Why didn't they go? Why did they "suffer" the degradations of this awful country for all of those years? We know the answer, don't we!
As to Communist literacy, I remember when Nicaragua announced that its literacy rate went from something like 20% to 90% under Socialism - in two years!
That's 70% of the population getting 6 to 8 years of regular full time schooling (depending on when one thinks "literacy" is achieved in childhood) in 2 years - while working in the Socialist Paradise.
I don't remember anyone in MSM questioning their assertions either.
I take it that brooksfoe believes Cuba's beggars and prostitutes keep their head up.
And good for him to believe it. The rest of us aren't so lucky.
Where to start...
I do NOT accept the assertion that the poorest in the US are as poor as the poorest in Cuba. I would assert that the poorest in the US are on par with the average Cuban citizen.
This whole universal health care canard is just that, a canard. I'm a doctor and have provided care for countless indigent patients who didn't have to pay a dime for the care they got. And the care they got far exceeds the BEST care to be provided in Cuba. As someone said ... free / universal medical care without medicine. Would YOU run down to Cuba to have ANY care? Do you REALLY want to hold Cuba up as a model for health care that the world should follow? SERIOUSLY????
Literacy?? Really? Do you remember the Cuban's trotting out Elian Gonzalez a few years after he was returned to Cuba. Remember his little commie uniform? The commie indoctrination that he was undergoing? Great education, again one that I am sure you'd send YOUR kids to, since our universal education system is so awful. WHATEVER! Not to mention that I do not believe for a second that there is 100% literacy there anymore than I believe that Saddam Hussein really "won" 100% of the vote.
Infant mortality... What another poor excuse of a canard. One question...Would you rather receive prenatal care in Cuba? Or the US? If you had a baby born prematurely, would you rather have that baby cared for in an intensive care nursery here? Or in Cuba?? SERIOUSLY.
Yancey said "I think most can agree that the very poorest in the US, and the very poorest in Cuba are likely equally poor."
Yancey, you don't know how wrong you are, because you can't even imagine what REAL poverty is like. Real poverty is not when you live in a housing project with color TV's and eat junk food for breakfast. Real poverty is when you don't eat ANYTHING for breakfast and you sleep in a mud hut or under the open sky and you have NO possessions at all other than the shirt on your back. The only people like that in America are mentally ill or end stage drug addicts. America is the only country in history where the "poor" people are really, really fat. It used to amuse my late father who had grown up in REAL poverty in Poland (and that was before the war, when things got even worse) to see 300 lb. women described on TV as poor- in Poland even "rich" people could not have afforded to eat enough to make themselves that fat.
Yancey said "I think most can agree that the very poorest in the US, and the very poorest in Cuba are likely equally poor.
Words from someone who has never been to a country that actually HAS poverty.
What is television penetration in the US? 99%? In India, it is about 10%.
Why are the 'poor' in the US not leaving to go to a more prosperous country?
Why are the poor in the US obese? Show me any poor person in a poor country who is fat.
So ignorant...
Another point about Infant Mortality, which the Fidelistas most likely are not aware of. Fascist Pinochet AND democratic Costa Rica both had a better record in reducing Infant Mortality than Fidel. Check it out: various statistical yearbooks from ECLA (Economic Commission for Latin America: UN) and UCLA's Statistical Abstract of Latin America.
I see my earlier comment has been misinterpreted as I feared it might be.
When I wrote that the poorest of the poor in the United States are likely as poor as the poorest of the poor in Cuba, I meant exactly that- the poorest of the poor. That means I am talking about the very, very bottom of the income levels of both countries. I am not talking about the bottom 5% or even the bottom 1% of each country, I am comparing the very, very bottom, which includes people who have no income, no home, and live hand to mouth. People like this exist everywhere, many of whom are mentally ill or deeply dependent on illicit drugs- and I consider them equally poor.
Companeros! I am heartened to hear you embrace scientific socialism and I welcome you into the fraternal international brotherhood! En Cuba, ahem, in Cuba - it truly is a workers paradise! I would politely note, however, that the posters to this thread could, maybe, possibly, be considered "writers" or "contrarians" or some such other middle-class ape-ing parasites. Fear not! As in Cuba, we can send you to re-education camps - and those who live, well they find a new found love for the big brother..., er I mean "Commandante." ONWARD!!!
Prior to the fall of E Germany, it was widely thought that they had the most successful Communist government and that their standard of living was 2/3 that of W Germany. After the fall, it turned out that the standard was only about 1/3 that of W Germany. Perhaps something similar is happening with Cuba. At any rate, it is safe to say that from Lenin to Mao to Castro, the academic left has consistently underestimated the evils of Communism. Are there any academic studies about the root causes of academic stupidity in this area?
Prior to the fall of E Germany, it was widely thought that they had the most successful Communist government and that their standard of living was 2/3 that of W Germany. After the fall, it turned out that the standard was only about 1/3 that of W Germany. Perhaps something similar is happening with Cuba. At any rate, it is safe to say that from Lenin to Mao to Castro, the academic left has consistently underestimated the evils of Communism. Are there any academic studies about the root causes of academic stupidity in this area?
People on the Left I think are more likely to encourage their kids to be academics. This is especially true in the social sciences, which are often viewed dismissively by average conservatives. So academics are often children of Leftists or rebellious children of those on the Right. (And therefore sympathetic to the Left)
Right-wing parents I think often prefer their kids be in things like business, the military, mechanics, or the clergy. I believe business and engineering departments of Universities are somewhat more conservative than average, which might fit that.
BTW: I know it was a rhetorical question, I'm just being annoying.
For those who don't believe that poor people in the US display low levels of confidence in ways poor people in many poor countries don't: you're just wrong. Go to Flatbush or SE DC or Winslow, Arizona and look around; then go to Mali and look around. Most of it may have more to do with urban/rural divides; poor people in urban settings tend to be more hostile and underconfident than in rural settings, and most of the poor in the US are urban, where most of the poor in many third world countries are rural. There is some of that hostility and underconfidence in urban sections of Vietnam with high drug addiction rates, and, as I mentioned, in ethnic-minority highland areas. And the hostility, at least, in Lagos -- though I don't think I saw much underconfidence there.
It's a hoary and accurate cliche that in American culture, in contrast to, say, old-time Southern Europe, it's a sin to be poor. It means you've failed. In longstanding traditional societies, being poor doesn't necessarily reflect anything about your character.
booksfoe, in this country, if you are poor, you have failed! Did you hear about http://littleredsoapbox.blogspot.com/2008/02/making-american-dream.html#links
Going from nothing but $25 to an appartment, car and job in less than a year. Poor in America is a personal failure.
For those who don't believe that poor people in the US display low levels of confidence in ways poor people in many poor countries don't: you're just wrong.
But accepting arguendo your assertion, what does it prove? Do poverty make people have low confidence, or does low confidence make people poor? Or are they both symptoms of some underlying cause (bad parenting, poor schooling, low IQ)?
You very well may be correct in your observation but incorrect about its significance.
In longstanding traditional societies, being poor doesn't necessarily reflect anything about your character.
Of course, because as a general rule, everyone is poor in longstanding traditional societies. Dynamic capitalist societies are where wealth is created.
In perusing these comments, it appears that there is as much or even more discussion about the US than there is about Cuba. IOW,many posters on this thread are more concerned with using Cuba to make a comment about the US than they are about making a comment about Cuba.
Regarding 'poorest of the poor',
Any able-bodied and able-minded person in America can earn minimum wage, which is still enough to get the basic necessities of life. Note that the 'basic necessities' do not include living in Manhattan, having a brand new car, etc.
This is why so many millions come to America just to earn the US minimum wage (which is about 10X higher than what the same jobs in Mexico would pay).
Lastly, if I was handicapped (in a wheelchair, blind, etc.), the US is still the country where I would want to live. In the US, there are ramps, special parking places, special bathrooms, etc. for wheelchair-ridden people. Almost no other country has such provisions for handicapped people.