Ummm, I think the fact that they’re a COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP is probably slightly more of a problem for Cuba than the relative paucity of gay pride parades. Their grinding poverty is a direct consequence of communism.

I mean, you admitted this above. You agreed that capitalist countries would create more wealth than market socialist countries, and market socialist countries would in turn be richer than straight-up communist dictatorships. Quote:

GC: why is America wealthier than continental Europe, Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore wealthier than the PRC, South Korea wealthier than North Korea, and (the former) West Germany wealthier than (the former) East Germany?” Anjali: If an entire system is built for the sole purpose of profit, then of course it will generate more wealth. Continental Europe might not be as wealthy as the US, but they take care of their people better than we do. Why is it so important to be wealthy? To have basic necessities, yes, but the drive to be the wealthy superpower causes more harm than good.

You don’t seem to understand that being “more wealthy” is the difference between roads, running water, and electricity versus third world squalor. I don’t understand: how can you believe absolute poverty is a bad thing if you think wealth is unimportant? You have an enormous contradiction in your worldview.

As for the infant mortality statistics…I can’t believe you’re serious. Cuba is a third world country. People urinate and defecate in the streets. The idea that their medical care is better than ours is ludicrous – where are their CAT scans, 21st century drugs, and MRI machines?

You might try being a little curious about the propaganda you’ve been fed:

The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category — the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old. Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality — the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation. How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive — and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent — that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death. In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

In other words, the ostensibly higher “infant mortality” rate of the US is because we actually try to save the lives of premature babies – and record their deaths as deaths.

This may seem way too idealistic, butI think it’s good to have visions: We need a GLOBAL minimum wage and maximum wage. Eventually.

It’s not “idealistic”, it’s economically illiterate. I mean, do you understand that wealth can be created and not just moved around? Singapore did not loot its cell phones from Sierra Leone. You are not going to make the world wealthier by robbing the Taiwanese to give to the Tanzanians.

Let me ask you straight up: do you really believe that someone can get rich only if someone else is getting poorer? If so, how do you explain all the wealth – the running water, the electricity, the airplanes, the cars, the phones, the computers – around the world today? Where did that come from? And how do you explain the fact that previously useless things (like processed sand) are now worth billions of dollars?

A simplistic zero-sum understanding of economics cannot account for the brute fact that wealth has been created through technology.

Plus, they have really good music because they’re not forced to listen to Clear Channel crap all day.

Newsflash: no one is “forcing” you to listen to Clear Channel. You know that little dial that sits next to volume on the radio? Yes, it changes the station! In America you have a CHOICE, whereas the Cuban government controls what’s heard on the radio and said in print:

Reporters Without Borders today launched a campaign to bring the imprisonment of 30 journalists in Cuba to the attention of the public in France and the rest of the world. Twenty-six of these journalists were arrested at the end of March and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 27 years. The announcement was made at a press conference at the Saint-Lazare FNAC in Paris to mark World Press Freedom Day.

I mean…jeez…this idea that we’re being “forced to listen to Clear Channel” is the kind of elementary illogic I’d expect from feminists who equate women who voluntarily wear bikinis with women who are forced to wear burkas.

Then again, if you can’t understand the difference between voluntary charity and forced taxation, you may not understand the distinction between coercion and volition…or between freedom and communist slavery for that matter.

After all, what do you call someone who has 100% of his earnings seized by a state which has outlawed private property if not a slave?

As far as I know, Cuba isn’t free to trade with the rest of the world. I haven’t read up on this lately, but I do know that in the past, the US has made it difficult for other nations to trade with Cuba, punishing companies or nations that trade with Cuba. I think they’ve eased the sanctions a bit now, but honestly, I don’t have up to date info on this. I don’t support how the government handles dissidents, and I said before, I’m not defending their actions but pointing out the struggles they are up against. Our government has also done some nasty things when in a state of emergency.

As far as statistics go, yeah, one should always be careful. I’ve also read about the literacy rate in independent sources not compiled by the Cuban government. I also had the chance to travel and meet people in Cuba. I visited schools, and I do think they do a good job educating their children.

Well, the logical response to sanctions from the US is so clearly locking up dissidents and democracy activists. And that whole shooting people when they try to leave Cuba? Understandable. Sanctions, you know. Cuba is free to trade with the whole rest of the world, so it seems unlike that US sanctions are the sole reason for the poverty; more likely the fact that Cuba lost the Soviet Union as a patron over a decade ago and has never really recovered from losing all that foreign aid. And also, I would be very, very careful of believing statistics compiled by that particular regime. They might not be, well, entirely accurate.

(Anjali, I respect your opinion very much, I just disagree with you I am no ‘bash the left’ person, although I am of the right. Just saying, in case you think I am piling on, which I don’t mean to do).

I agree on this one. Clear channel is crap, go XM or Sirius Satellite Radio.

Ummm, people are risking death to escape Cuba:

The three men, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who reportedly hijacked a Cuban ferry with several dozen passengers on board on 2 April, and tried to force it to the United States. The incident, the third hijacking in two weeks in Cuba, ended without bloodshed, after several days’ stand-off between Cuban security forces and the hijackers.

Friday’s executions capped weeks of tension on the island of 11 million that included a flurry of attempted hijackings, dozens of arrests and stiff jail sentences for dissidents. Last week, 75 dissidents were sentenced with terms up to 28 years. They were accused of collaborating with, or taking money from, U.S. officials.

It’s a prison state ruled by a Communist dictator with a third world standard of living. The sentence for trying to escape is death. Nevertheless, every year dozens of brave souls try to make it to American shores.

You don’t see anyone sneaking into Cuba. So what exactly would you have us “learn” from Cuba?

Are you serious? I mean, I am a BIG fan of Star Trek and its utopic Earthbound settings but enforcing a GLOBAL minimum AND maximum wage is the most naive suggestion I have heard.

Capitalistic, communist, whatever. Bottom line is people will pay for services and good desired and not pay for things they do not see desirable.

You put a cap on both, you simply force the business to go underground in ‘Black Markets’ which are completely unregulated.

Maybe when we do have Warp drive and go where no man has gone before we can aspire to work for self betterment, not for monetary gain.