I don’t think westerners are even intelligent enough to know the reason behind it. I think the implication is that “low skilled workers” are paid as much as high skilled workers because socialism = equal everything. Or that Cuba is so poor that doctors make as much as cab drivers.
Personally I think people with more complicated and highly technical jobs should have some special kind of compensation, but the capitalist idea that you should be starving because you don’t do heart surgery is just evil.
AFAIK Cuba has been dealing with strange economic consequences of tourism basically ever since they opened themselves up to tourists. Dollars are worth a lot so "tipped" professions that get foreign cash get paid a lot, but the government doesn't want everyone moving to tourism-adjacent professions so they've done stuff like introduce an alternate currency for converting dollars and stuff like that. The recent liberalization of small scale businesses is the latest in a long list of attempts by the Cuban government to get a handle on it, in this case by legitimizing - and therefore taxing - what used to be black market transactions.
I thought it was caused by the end of subsidies from the Soviet Union. Regardless, it's still a good narrative and everyone should be paid the same no matter what. Divide how much a society makes by the number of people. Presto, problems are solved.
When education is remunerated, pay differentials make no sense. At that point you aren't personally responsible for the cost of education, so the cost is offloaded to society and you're paid for you time. The only factor at that point is how much labor it takes to educate you and how that factors into future allocations of labor.
When you go through education, you become part means of production. The knowledge and skill imparted on you by the labor of others becomes a constant capital stored within you that is exhausted over the course of your life.
Its off-key, because it obscures why doctors in the US make so much and cab drivers make relatively little.
Namely, because the US heavily limits access to medical education and technology, while heavily subsidizing access to private vehicles. In Cuba, it is the cars that are rare and the medical schools that are prolific. 6 Cubans in 1,000 are doctors, the highest margin in the world.
Its like bragging about how soda in the US is cheaper than water. American economists like to pretend this is an economy functioning at peak efficiency. Look at how much luxury we produce! No, don't ask why we spend so much time and resources bottling what comes out of a tap practically for free or how we produce so much cheap aluminum and corn syrup or even what the long-term health impacts of incredibly cheap syrup-drink on the population.
Just know that our cabs are cheap, as they should be! And our doctors are priced to be exclusively available to only the wealthiest residents, as they should be!
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I don’t think westerners are even intelligent enough to know the reason behind it. I think the implication is that “low skilled workers” are paid as much as high skilled workers because socialism = equal everything. Or that Cuba is so poor that doctors make as much as cab drivers.
Personally I think people with more complicated and highly technical jobs should have some special kind of compensation, but the capitalist idea that you should be starving because you don’t do heart surgery is just evil.
AFAIK Cuba has been dealing with strange economic consequences of tourism basically ever since they opened themselves up to tourists. Dollars are worth a lot so "tipped" professions that get foreign cash get paid a lot, but the government doesn't want everyone moving to tourism-adjacent professions so they've done stuff like introduce an alternate currency for converting dollars and stuff like that. The recent liberalization of small scale businesses is the latest in a long list of attempts by the Cuban government to get a handle on it, in this case by legitimizing - and therefore taxing - what used to be black market transactions.
tl;dr economy be complicated
This is a pretty good video on Cuba
Why? I thought it was a good thing that everyone makes the same salary. We are all of equal worth. There's no such thing as "unskilled" labor.
Take the amount of value in the economy, divide it by the number of workers. That's your salary. For everyone, from Premier down to street sweeper.
deleted by creator
I thought it was caused by the end of subsidies from the Soviet Union. Regardless, it's still a good narrative and everyone should be paid the same no matter what. Divide how much a society makes by the number of people. Presto, problems are solved.
deleted by creator
When education is remunerated, pay differentials make no sense. At that point you aren't personally responsible for the cost of education, so the cost is offloaded to society and you're paid for you time. The only factor at that point is how much labor it takes to educate you and how that factors into future allocations of labor.
When you go through education, you become part means of production. The knowledge and skill imparted on you by the labor of others becomes a constant capital stored within you that is exhausted over the course of your life.
Its off-key, because it obscures why doctors in the US make so much and cab drivers make relatively little.
Namely, because the US heavily limits access to medical education and technology, while heavily subsidizing access to private vehicles. In Cuba, it is the cars that are rare and the medical schools that are prolific. 6 Cubans in 1,000 are doctors, the highest margin in the world.
Its like bragging about how soda in the US is cheaper than water. American economists like to pretend this is an economy functioning at peak efficiency. Look at how much luxury we produce! No, don't ask why we spend so much time and resources bottling what comes out of a tap practically for free or how we produce so much cheap aluminum and corn syrup or even what the long-term health impacts of incredibly cheap syrup-drink on the population.
Just know that our cabs are cheap, as they should be! And our doctors are priced to be exclusively available to only the wealthiest residents, as they should be!