would you rather live in cuba or us oriented paradises (paradisos?) like colombia, guatemala and panama?

Depends who you get to be, doesn’t it? I actually do live in Guatemala and have been to Cuba twice, and I’d say that all the way down through the middle class (ie, the top 10% in both places) Guatemala is the place to be. There’s probably another 30% (the upper-lower class) where it’s a wash. And being really poor, really sucks, in either place, though obviously even then it’s nice (and healthy) to be able to read so Cuba wins there. But even if you have to roll the dice, it is possible to reasonably choose Guatemala.

No great fan of Glorious Capitalism, and being embargoed may have something to do with that, and all. But to say that Cuba is just objectively better-off than Guate is misleading.

i hate to get all truthy on your ass but, this is not true. no country has done more with less.

India. South Korea. Mexico. Half the world, actually. I’m glad he’s your favorite dictator – mine’s Islam Karimov, btw – but all sorts of free societies with much much greater natural and political handicaps and no superpower sugardaddies have left Cuba far, far behind.

i hate to get all truthy on your ass but, this is not true. no country has done more with less. it’s possible you might have wanted to say ‘many countries do less with more,’ which would certainly be accurate.

also the rubles stopped flowing in the late 80s. how bad is cuba? there is actually a semi-objective standard for determining such things. would you rather live in cuba or us oriented paradises (paradisos?) like colombia, guatemala and panama? there are dictators and then there are just plain dicks. fidel is more of the former and less of the latter. i say this as someone who actually has lived under several dictatorships and can subjectively evaluate him on a dictator ranking scale of my own devising. thank you, that is all.

And quite possibly averting some sort of revolutionary uprising; people start considering drastic options when they can’t see any way of meeting their basic needs. If some heartless incompetent boob like Bush had been in charge during the depression, would we have the same largely laissez-faire capitalist system as we do now? These jokers should offer prayers of gratitude to an FDR shrine every damn day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Island

Visca el Marmitistas!

Chris Bertam is a commie.

And probably a Brit, and thus a resident of a far-off island with dreadful weather and chip butties with marmite. Make my day.