Discriminating Communists?

The Miami Herald has published an article which claims that the AP obtained an internal report from the Cuban Central Bank, (read Fidel and Raúl’s private piggy bank), that was distributed to Cuba’s communist party members, urging the regime “to gradually unify the island's two parallel currencies and cut back on ''indiscriminate'' subsidies.”

The leaked document is a work of genius in that it states the obvious: Something’s got to give.

The double currency system, one of (f)idel’s brain children, is causing social unease and class divisions in the egalitarian socialist paradise, just like (f)idel’s other schemes, because that is exactly what they were designed to do. They were engineered to line the (c)astro nostra family’s pockets and keep the Cuban population isolated, penniless, demoralized and always looking for their next meal.

The new pragmatic and collegial regime is more interested in keeping its profit margins; something that it cannot do if it doesn’t keep motivating its captive workforce. The Cuban worker, after fifty years of communism, knows all too well that putting their best efforts forward in the workplace will not garner any benefits and have modified their work ethic accordingly.

And so, the Central Bank has to raise this red flag, more like a white flag, really, because once again, it has to admit that the regime’s policies and purported ideology have been defeated by the very free market laws that has been “heroically resisting” for 50 years. Yet another surrender in the battle of ideas.

One way to motivate the workforce is to give workers more buying power by strengthening the monopoly money that Cubans get paid in-the Peso. The problem is, this would cut into (r)aúl’s profit margin unless productivity is simultaneously increased. Productivity can only be increased if workers are rewarded according to their contributions to a final product or service. This “capitalist, imperial” practice would force the employer, (the regime-(r)aúl), to be “discriminate” on compensation. After all, paying the same amount to an employee that produces less amounts to a subsidy to that employee.

The regime has already laid the groundwork for this by eliminating the “ceiling” to wages a Cuban can legally earn and by legitimizing foreign companies to give Cubans stipends-over and above what the regime pays them-as long as they pay taxes.

Other “indiscriminate subsidies” also include the rationed food items available through the “libreta” and the so called “free” education and healthcare.

In order to be discriminate in distributing these “subsidies”, the regime would also need to adopt the discriminating practices of the free market system in which subsidies are given to needy individuals based on income eligibility. Like food stamps, student financial aid and Medicare.

So it is foreseeable to see the Cuban regime adopt many of the discriminate and un-egalitarian practices that it has “heroically resisted” over the last 50 years in order to save (r)aúl & co.’s cash flow.

Posted by Gusano at May 10, 2008 02:44 PM

Comments

Posted by: Dr.Shalit at May 11, 2008 08:12 AM