Cuban Socialism Might Not Be So Bad After All

All those nasty things that Americans have been saying about Fidel Castro’s Cuba could be overblown. True, Che Guevara was Fidel’s butcher. But hay, that was a long time ago. Modern day Cuba is moving forward, and they are environmentally conscious and concerned about old appliances, which are not electrically efficient.

Where else but a socialist country would the government provide a new more energy efficient refrigerator to every household? No questions asked. Everyone gets one. Throw the old refrigerator out and receive a brand new Chinese refrigerator. In fact you are required to do so even if, I suppose, you already have a perfectly good, but maybe not so efficient, refrigerator.

Of course, even in a socialist country nothing is free. Each household is required to buy the new refrigerator for what is equivalent to $289. If you’ve recently priced refrigerators you will see that the Cuban deal is a steal. Of course, that depends upon who is doing the stealing. It seems that most Cuban couples earn about $25 a month and they are having to take out 10 year mortgages at 10% interest to pay for the new refrigerator. Oh, and that mortgage is from the State. And, the State is not buying up the old refrigerators. They’ll just take them and turn them into scrap revenue for the State. So, with such low wages that refrigerator doesn’t look like such a good deal after all.

Don’t believe me? Read about it here.