Cuba doubles minimum wage to $9.40/month

kagemusha said:

Why do you hate america?

BrokenAlice said:
I admit I'm pretty ignorant about the economy and politics of Cuba, but the standard of living can't be that terrible with a 96% literacy rate.

Pauillac said:
It seems to me that comparisons of the average monthly income of Cubans relative to Americans would be assinine. A better comparison between the relative standard of living in Cuba (with US meddling) against that of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, or Jamaica.

Pauillac said:
It seems to me that comparisons of the average monthly income of Cubans relative to Americans would be assinine.

stockula said:
$10 a month for plumbers.........the plumbers I know make $80,000 a year

stockula said:

Oh? What good is universal literacy when the government decides what you can and cannot read?

$10 a month for plumbers.........the plumbers I know make $80,000 a year and are free to say anything they want against our government and can cross foreign border freely. They spend maybe $10 a day on lunch.


[Edited on Apr 24, 2005 by stockula]

kagemusha said:

Yes. A source run by anti-Castro people is not a credible source. Sorry.

What's more, you can find a better source if you look for longer than 15 seconds.

Pauillac said:
It should be obvious, to anyone not blinded by the axe they are grinding, that government residences shouldn't be construed as be owned by Fidel. I assume that you wouldn't include the real estate value of the White House when calculating George Bush's net worth.

Brinstar said:

Well, playing Devil's Advocate, if you were an "unbiased" source and found that as your conclusion, you would probably end up anti-Castro.

Actually, most people are anti-Castro period, if only for his record on human rights and free speech.

Pauillac said:

Doubtlessly she has been infected with the power of critical thought by those Liberal professors that plague universities these days.

stockula said:

Ah, you're right. He's only worth about $150m. I'll change it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3492986.stm


[Edited on Apr 23, 2005 by stockula]

The weekly financial magazine said the estimates were “more art than science.”

“In the past, we have relied on a percentage of Cuba’s gross domestic product to estimate Fidel Castro’s fortune,” Forbes explained.

“This year, we have used more traditional valuation methods, comparing state-owned assets Castro is assumed to control with comparable publicly traded companies,” it said.

razorbladesonata said:
this is interesting as cuba now surpasses the mighty us of a , the "strongest" nation in the world..cuba also has a higher literacy rate as well as health care..maybe if we hadn't wasted hundreds of billions on an unjustified war , we could do the same..but we have to "protect" our citizens right???...riiight..

Dave_H said:

how the fuck are they they the "strongest" country in the world?! we could squash that little thing in a minute if we wanted to.

AceTracer said:
If Kennedy had pursued the same foreign policy that Bush does, we would all be talking apes right now.

dkmfc said:

hey, how about we make our comparison based on something coparative to the size and population of cuba...something like say...delaware.
yep. 96% literacy rate there too. and I'm sure there's plenty of access to healthcare in delaware too.

Uninsured individuals represent less than 10% of the total Delaware population- a percentage thathas gone down from 14% in the 2000 Current Population Survey. Delaware continues to do betterthan the region or nation. According to US Census Bureau reports in September 2003, Delawarewas fairing better than the region and the nation who respectively had uninsured rates of 12.9% and 15.2%. According to that same US Census Bureau report, Delaware had the seventh lowest uninsured rate in the nation.

AceTracer said:
Minimum wage in this country is $824/mo. That's $10,712 a year assuming a 40 hour work week with no time off. Can you live on that? How much is left over when you pay for rent, utilities, transportation, food. Forget about health care for you or your children, or sending them to college, you're fucked. All of these things are provided for Cuban citizens.

I'm not challenging the fact that the quality of life in Cuba is far worse than it is here, but we shouldn't be assuming this place is perfect either. When you take into account everything you have to pay for in this country, the amount of money minimum wage workers have left isn't that much more.

Also, I think doubling the minimum wage regardless of price is a pretty significant thing. It'd be nice if the US government doubled their minimum wage, which has remained stagnant for what, 7 or 8 years now? I think accounting for inflation the US has had the lowest minimum wage since its introduction.

Dave_H said:

how the fuck are they they the "strongest" country in the world?! we could squash that little thing in a minute if we wanted to.

stockula said:

I know it is not fair to compare wages in Cuba to wages in the US. That's why I said it'd be interesting to compare current wages, even the extravagant $10 month minimum wage dictated by Castro, against the real value of average Cuban wages in the 50's. I'd bet my life average real wages were at least 10 times higher before Castro.

stockula said:
I know it is not fair to compare wages in Cuba to wages in the US.

AceTracer said:
I don't agree with Fidel Castro's politics, I don't agree with dictatorships of any kind, and fundamentally I think communism is an interesting but ultimately flawed economic concept. However, I don't begrudge other countries their right to govern themselves as they please. I don't consider myself or my country superior to any other country, just because I prefer our system. Neither should you.

monastrell said:

why would anyone cheer for and wish to expedite the elimination of jobs for the poorest members of society ?....that is effectively what you are doing.

if minimum wage laws were the solution to generating wealth for working peoples : why not pay everyone $ 700/hr ????

in businesses that run tight profit margins and cannot control material cost, nor the competitive mean that their product must cost consumers when it goes to market ... the only control they have is over the cost of labor. by curbing what an owner/operator can offer ... you are controlling the extent of his labor pool and the number of jobs he can offer.

basically, the way that this works is that unskilled, or inexperienced workers cannot find a way into the job market - i.e. - unemployment for young workers, and uneductated workers. places that could employ 6 trained but unskilled workers can only afford to staff their business with 4 - i.e. - net loss of jobs. minimum wage laws crush the people they are intended to help .... the working poor, because it eliminates their options.

for more info click here : http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MinimumWages.html