The dire situation in communist Cuba is not getting better, and neither has it stabilized. Day by day, things are getting worse as a corrupt and brutally oppressive regime clings to power with all its might.
Cuban independent journalist Rafaela Cruz reports from Havana via Diario de Cuba:
Cuba’s unstoppable spiral of misery
Castroism is hanging on thanks to a suicidal embrace of stopgap measures with no future, producing a steady decline in the country’s productive capacity.
“This year we’ve received only 48% of the fuel that was planned,” and “of the 43 million planned for the purchase of raw materials, spare parts, bread production, maintenance, and the repair of the boilers at the dairy factory, only seven million, 9% of the total slated, have been issued.”
Food Industry Minister Alberto López recently acknowledged that “last year, out of 22 selected productions, there was a decrease in 20, and none of the goals set have been achieved this year.” However, what the minister is really recognizing is the bleak tomorrow that awaits a country not only incapable of improving, but one unable to even maintain its existing capital, which is what its current and future standard of living depends on.
Ministries, companies and other state conglomerates are unable to keep means of production (many stolen in 1959) in sound condition, so they are becoming ever less efficient and more unproductive, prone to more frequent and prolonged breakdowns, such that Cuba’s machinery’s productivity is less and less productive than what its manufacturers had projected, all while growing progressively more expensive, which is why Cuba is no longer competitive in anything but producing tobacco and fermenting rum… and the latter thanks to a French company.
With old and damaged machinery, industrial exploitation ratios become negative. Production in Cuba would yield losses instead of profits if the Government were not offsetting its capital costs by skimping on workers’ remuneration. Socialism always starts out with the state subsidizing the people, but it always ends with the people subsidizing the government.
How is the rest of the economy destined to fare when a high-priority agency like the Food Industry receives less than half of the fuel scheduled, and only seven of the 43 million that the plan estimated as necessary for its needs?
Every “planned” economy tends to fail in its own planning, because the very act of “planning” by centralized bodies prevents the plasticity essential for any ecosystem to realize its potential.
Paradoxically, planning, far from organizing, disorganizes the allocation of resources that, in a decentralized manner, a free market coordinates and allocates much more effectively, whenever prices are not interfered with.
Continue reading HERE.
Remember, there is only one real priority, and it is NOT ‘the people.” It is staying in power, period.
And the powers-that-be instead of asking the regime to step down, always ask the exile community to stop insisting that Cuba is embargoed.