Well, I did not see this coming. The BBC reports that Cuba is about to open up most of its economy to private ownership.
Cuba!
Cuba has announced it will allow private businesses to operate in most sectors, in what is a major reform to its state-controlled economy.
“…major reform…”? It’s the communists admitting defeat. Because:
The communist country’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic and US sanctions introduced by the Trump administration.
Last year its economy shrank by 11% – its worst decline in almost three decades – and Cubans have been facing shortages of basic goods.
Well, we did have toilet paper shortages here, but that was mainly because people panic-hoarded when they didn’t need to. It wasn’t due to decades of abusive state policy.
Experts on Cuba’s tangled and complicated economy say the step essentially opens up almost all economic activity on the island to some form of private enterprise, the BBC’s Will Grant in Havana says.
This will be a significant shot in the arm for those families and individuals who harbour hopes of moving beyond just the very small businesses into medium-sized ventures, he notes.
The Beeb just admitted that government control stifles the economy and that that’s a bad thing.
This is a significant shift. While Democrats in the allegedly capitalist United States lurch ever more socialist, one of the last holdouts from the Soviet communist sphere is abandoning the revolution. AOC will be crushed if someone reads this to her. And what about Bernie and his bros?
Who am I kidding? They still think socialism is fine, it just hasn’t been tried by the right people yet. It hasn’t been branded as “equity” and pitched in Instagram videos by a millennial politician up to now. That’s basically the 21 century version of Fidel Castro’s long-winded tirades, but still. AOC has that “it factor,” according to the media.
Here’s a wild thought. With Harris-Biden in the White House pushing their transformative executive orders, it’s possible that in the near future both Vietnam and Cuba will be more actually capitalist than the United States of America under Democrat rule.
via pjmedia