So, sadly from the Alma Mater, we have some bint arguing that Castro’s economic performance in Cuba wasn’t half bad, given the circumstances.
Look at her first chart, of GDP.
She’s used gross GDP. Not per capita. That’s not just misleading that’s casuistry to the point of fraud. And don’t forget, those Cuban numbers are the ones Cuba itself reports.
From the same data set, here it is per capita:
And her chart again:
Just so we know where this bint is coming from:
In 2013 I spent time in Venezuela, advising a government ministry (Ministerio de Poder Popular para las Comunas y los Movimientos Sociales) on a new economic management system they were developing and gave a series of lectures and presentations about my work on Cuban & Latin American political economy.
Ecks? When’s your purge starting?
I have no power Tim other than to prophecy the all-too-obvious.
It’s a grand life (more like a hundred grand life, I expect) – you get paid shitloads of cash to preach your loony economic beliefs to foreigners, and you don’t suffer any of the consequences when it all fucks up.
I suspect that once Cuba opens up, the figures will “unexpectedly” have to be revised downwards…
And, given how the Left talks about exploitation, let’s take that latest figure on its own merits.
GDP/capita of $6k in 2000 constant dollars.
Of which the average worker sees $240/year in today’s dollars, which is about $170 in 2000 constant dollars, plus a ration card and a derelict apartment.
Now I have no idea how much the ration card is worth in cash terms, not what the rental value of a Cuban ramshackle apartment is, but just the cash is only 2.8% of the value add of the worker.
Even if you can somehow price in the rations and the apartment, Cuba achieves a level of exploitation that would make the robberiest of robber barons blush…
‘I spent time in Venezuela, advising a government ministry . . . on a new economic management system.’
If she returns, will they commission a firing squad?
Hmm
https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/globalization-consumer-products-understanding-evolving-cuban-consumer/?chapter=4
Median household income appears to be around $500 although there is also subsidized stuff. In reality they’re probably around $3,000 per cap.
I like the way ‘blockade’ and ’embargo’ are used interchangeably.
@Dongguan John,
Sometimes even by the same people who seem to confuse “being a member of the EU single market” with “blocade” (cf. “we won’t be able to trade with Europe”).
So what happened in the mid-90’s?
Did lots of people escape improving GDP/capita or they just told bigger lies with their data?
I’m actually curious about how they track DR so well after this point.
Raffles
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1445782
Increase in productivity when they partially freed the economy according to this bloke. Collapse is obviously due to the fall of USSR.
Given that workers are getting diddly and a lot of the production is state, they probably make up a lot of the numbers. And it wouldnt surprise me if they just track near neighbours to come up with a GDP number.
Ken beat me to the Soviet Union collapse leading to the drop in the mid-90’s.
If these numbers by some chance are correct it actually doesn’t look all that bad. Losing a magic money tree hurt but the economy recovered. I’d expect a similar graph for McKeesport if welfare was suddenly cut off.
Just to be sure no one is confused I would be willing to bet my house that the numbers are doctored. Proving it is the tough part given the information available to me.
“Should we apply the yardsticks of capitalist economics, focusing on growth and productivity statistics to measure “success” or “failure”, while paying little attention to social and political priorities?
Even factoring in its low GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (HDI) lists Cuba in the “high human development” category; it excels not just in health and education, but also in women’s participation and political inclusion.”
Really?REALLY? A dictatorship that locks away in so-called psychiatric hospitals dissenters, gays, HIV sufferers, anybody who tries to leaves without permission; this country gets a high HDI rating? Who sets the criteria, Richard Gott?
Ironman
Ah, funnily enough it turns out that high isnt really very high. There are 49 Very high HDI countries and High is the next group.
Cuba is ranked 67th
http://report.hdr.undp.org/
It also weights life expectancy, schooling together with GDP per capita. If we redid the GDP per capita to its true level, they’d probably drop to medium.
I hate playing devil’s advocate here, I really do.
If Cuban GDP/capita is as good as the Dom Rep (that’s the good part of Hispaniola right? Principal Export Quality cigars that are acceptable to the US White market, cf. Cuba, principal Export Quality cigars that are acceptable to the European market).
So Cuba is doing about as well as a mediocrely-run non-dictatorship that sells the same Kind of weed as it does.
Which means economically it is not being terribly run. The terrible bit seems to come from being a nasty kleptocratic dictatorship that steals all of that cigar Export Money for the benefit of the Regime.
Personally, I prefer Panamanian cigars.
Sorry about the autocapitalisation, I have no idea why that is Happening.
White means not black market or Grey market, nothing to do with Melanin.
I still contend Panama makes the most fucking amazing cigars that make Cuba look amateurish.
Which could be true, if the reported GDP figures are trustworthy and “accurate” (as accurate as GDP figures get), rather than just made up to look like they were comparable to a mediocrely-run non-dictatorship.
(Not sure which thread it was, but one on here or one of Tim’s Forbes articles recently suggested the made-up answer was more likely.)
I have often wondered whether France’s GDP numbers are not ‘adjusted’.
@BiW,
Thing is, if Cuba with its 98% state-run economy is making 6 grand a year per head, it’s quite some fucking overhead that sees most of the plebs getting less than 10% of that. I guess that’s solidarity for you.
Yeah, it’s an obviously shite figure. Not even Castro could run a country where the workers capture 4% of their output.
Stuck in German mode? The “Kind” being capitalised looks suspicious…
BiG, I’ve had that happen a few times in the last week or so. Tries to capitalise every word, and I lose autocorrect. I assumed it was my phone’s keyboard screwing up. Refreshing the page seems to clear it, though.