A lot of people missed it but the Castros this week announced they have thrown in the towel on their failed economic system and are suddenly going to turn on a dime and give private enterprise a shot.
The first clue came in August when President Raul Castro said in a speech “Cuba will no longer be known as the only country in the world where you do not have to work to live.”
And now word comes out of Havana of sweeping new changes to the country’s economy — starting with the elimination of 500,000 civil service jobs and the introduction of income tax.
“Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining enterprises with inflated payrolls, losses that pull down our economy and make us counterproductive, generate bad habits and distort worker behaviour,” said a statement by the Cuban Workers’ Central (CTC).
In reaction Havana-based Reuters scribes Marc Frank and Jeff Franks wrote, “the jobs plan was the most significant step so far in a series of reforms by President Raul Castro and the biggest shift toward private enterprise since the 1960s.”
Perhaps these Castro job cuts could be Cuba’s Berlin Wall turning-point moment?
“It has the potential of being an earthquake,” Florida International University in Miami Cuban expert Marifeli Pérez-Stable told Reuters, adding this is shining a light on the fact “the contract Cubans had with the revolution doesn’t work anymore.”
Stay tuned because this is what went on prior to the end of the Eastern Bloc’s reign. You’ll notice there was no talk of cutting police or military.
In addition to cutting 500,000 government positions they are planning to grant “250,000 licences for self-employment and creating 200,000 non-state jobs largely by converting state businesses into employee-run co-operatives” where the “self-employed will be able to hire additional workers.”
It’s a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream being thrust upon a society that pretends to work while the government pretends to pay them. Remember this is a place with a history of 50 years without capitalism and all of the complications and competitiveness that go with it. They don’t understand it.
