Inspired by discussions of Cuba’s place in the world here, here, here, and doubtless other places.
| 12 | ▼ (4) |  United States |
▲ 0.951 |
| 51 | ▼ (1) |  Cuba |
▲ 0.838 |
| 52 | ▲ (1) |  Mexico |
▲ 0.829 |
Freedom In The World -
| Cuba |
7 | 7 | Not Free |
| Mexico* |
2 | 3 | Free |
| United States* |
1 | 1 | Free |
Happy Planet Index -
| 6 | Cuba |
61.86 |
| 38 | Mexico |
54.39 |
| 150 | United States of America |
28.83 |
February 27, 2008 at 7:53 am
Back in grad school there was a janitor who had fled Cuba many years ago. He claimed to have been relatively close to Fidel. You should have heard the things he had to say…
As for Cuba, what can I say…a certain family member of mine, who travels there quite frequently, takes with him powdered milk on every trip to give away to the locals who help him out. The reason is that they can’t get enough milk for their families.
And well, I am not sure what the Happy Planet Index is trying to prove, but Colombia 2nd?? I don’t think so!
February 27, 2008 at 8:45 am
“And well, I am not sure what the Happy Planet Index is trying to prove, but Colombia 2nd?? I don’t think so!”
Dude, what are you talking about?
February 27, 2008 at 9:09 am
That’s beyond parody. You don’t know what it’s saying, but you’re just sure that it’s wrong?
February 27, 2008 at 9:21 am
Nationally competitive political parties -
Cuba: 1
Mexico: 3
United States: 2
Mexico wins!
February 27, 2008 at 9:52 am
Maybe I need to rephrase. I know what it means, but I don’t see the point of citing it. And there are many reasons why I think it’s wrong, particularly in the case of Colombia.
February 27, 2008 at 10:03 am
In Soviet Colombia, Happy Planet Index ranks YOU!
Sorry, I’ve been reading Slashdot lately. What were we talking about again?
February 27, 2008 at 11:11 am
He’s Columbian, if that helps. Although he’s suspiciously bad at soccer, so draw your own conclusions.
Anyway, the point of citing it is that someone put it together. I think it’s supposed to be some overall measure of efficient use of resources, of something like that. I’m sure these all employ methodology that makes baby Bill James cry, but they can’t be worse than duelling anecdotes.
February 27, 2008 at 11:31 am
I didn’t read your post, but I did read this:
“Deep poverty is much more picturesque…. Poor countries have their old colonial buildings still standing, because no one had the money (or the reason) to tear them down…. The countryside is dotted with adorable houses made out of natural materials and natives wearing colorful traditional garb…. Middle income countries are smoggy, and almost everything looks like a cheaper, shabbier version of what you get in the US.”
I hadn’t really thought about that but he does make a good point. I guess it all depends on what the old buildings look like on the inside. Have they been modernized or not? The small towns in real Mexico are a good example. The brand new houses that stand out among the other, older houses indicate that a person now living in the US sent money back to have it built (and it’s most likely uninhabited for most of the year). As for the older houses, you have to go inside to know whether the family is middle class (running water, tile floors, etc.) or not (dirt floors, etc.)
February 27, 2008 at 11:32 am
Good to add data to the debate. I would just like to mention that DeLong said Cuba should be compared to Northern Mexico not the whole country. Here will be* his list
“That is the wrong comparison: Cuba in 1960 is like Costa Rica, northern Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Portugal.”
off to the HDI
▼ Portugal ▼ 0.897
Costa Rica ▲ 0.846
(1998) Puerto Rico ▬ 0.942
Cuba ▲ 0.838
2005 except for Puerto Rico.
Unless something really bad has happened in Puerto rico, the guess that HDI followed income in 1960 would imply that Cuba has performed very badly. Also Costa Rica has nothing much to brag about (except making peace in Nicaragua).
*If as DeLong asserts it is 1960 neither he nor you have written your posts, but like the medium lobster I am not bound by time.
February 27, 2008 at 11:37 am
Or a bunch of chickens (lots of chickens, etc.).
February 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm
That quote about picturesqueness is from McArdle, who once again shows her ignorance. The old colonial buildings are still standing in downtown Bogotá, Mexico City, and Santiago de Chile, for example, and it’s not because there hasn’t been money to tear down and replace them. Their insides have been refurbished and technologically modernized, and not because of remittances from the U.S. In Latin America you will only see homes made of “natural materials” (I assume she means thatch, banana leaf, or wattle and daub and not stone or brick, both of which could arguably be categorize as natural) in places and situations of most extreme poverty, and you will not see them as dwellings in Cuba. The dress of rural people in Cuba—and urban people for that matter— is pretty much the same as that of residents of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Also, there are no “natives” in Cuba. Additionally, getting back to the city, the persistence of colonial architecture in places like Havana and Santiago de Cuba should be attributed to various factors working in combination. One is lack of funds to remodel. Another is the durability and continuing utility of the old colonial buildings. A third is the aggressive effort made by the Cuban state to preserve and protect these buildings. Not necessarily the residential ones, but certainly those used for government, culture, and education.
February 27, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Well, I’m not one to back McArdle, but she does have a point. Drive down to TJ. It looks like a crappy version of a crappy section of LA, like emptied a vacuum cleaner over Gardena or some shit. (Those are the nice parts.) This isn’t too far from what it is, and yet people from all over Mexico (and elsewhere, including the US) go there to work because there’s dollars/pesos to be made. Drive further down the coast, and you’ll see beautiful old hotels and resorts – not colonial, obviously, but 50-100 years old, a lovely smapshot of Old Hollywood glamour – and all sorts of largely unspoiled countryside, and it looks like LA probably looked before 60 trillion driving-impaired assholes moved there and made it a horrible asphault shithole. And yet there’s (almost) nothing going on here. The old businesses remain as they were because there’s no reason to update them. People live there, they have what Americans would consider million dollar views, but they’re a long way fom rich. It looks nice because nobody’s done anything there in decades, because there’s no point, no money. It sure is purty, though. Talking about properly “colonial” buildings might be overkill – colonial in Latin American can be pretty old – but the point that familiar industry reads ugly, and “exotic” stasis reads pretty, is a reasonable one. Places you want to live and places you’d like a postcard of often do not overlap.
February 27, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Basically, inferring wealth/quality of life from quaintness rarely works.
February 27, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Except on Nantucket.
February 27, 2008 at 3:49 pm
McArdle argues Cuba suffers deep poverty and that the outward surface of this deep poverty deceives, as it is often perceived as picturesque. Her examples of the picturesque include colonial architecture, rural houses made of natural materials, “natives” in “colorful traditional garb,” and animals grazing near farming instruments. The last item is in my opinion a throw away, as the presence of grazing animals and ag tools characterizes all of rural Latin America, no matter how poor or rich the country in question (What those animals and tools are being used for in the Cuba case is a different question altogether, but she doesn’t get into that). This list she presents as possible explanation for why some blog commenters who have visited Cuba insist things aren’t as bad as they are elsewhere. The problem is, the only item from her list (again excluding the horsies and plows) a visitor would encounter in Cuba is the colonial architecture, and in this instance, it’s not the buildings’ date of construction that shows life ain’t no cup of tea in Cuba but rather their decay. This goes for the residential buildings built in the 19th (actually colonial) and early 20th (not actually colonial) centuries. There’s no money for their upkeep, in contrast to the colonial buildings I mentioned above. As for the other items, rural Cuban don’t live in houses built that way, there are no natives in a thoroughly Creole society, and the only time one will see rural Cubans dressed in a “traditional” outfit is when they’re taking part in some acto folklórico. In other words, she tells people who visited the island they saw and were deceived by things that, with the exception of a certain category of old building, they did not nor could not see.
All that said, a different, better-informed checklist of indicators would show that things in Cuba are indeed fucked up.
February 27, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Just to make one point clear, the old, decaying buildings look like shit on the outside, so no one who sees them is fooled by their quaintness.
February 27, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Five of the top nine represent the countries with the most deportees from the US.
Do we hate them for teh happiness they try to illegally import?
That must be how they are found out, walking around with all their illegal happiness showing.
h/t j prine
February 27, 2008 at 4:29 pm
People seem incapable of reading what the “Happy Planet Index” is actually measuring.
February 27, 2008 at 4:42 pm
To be fair, it’s an awfully stupid name.
February 27, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Whatever, earth raper. Everybody knows the planet would be happier without people on it.
February 27, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I think the United States of The Moon gets a perfect score.
February 27, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I desire to be deafened by an 8500 #, 10 mpg, one pax carrying F350 before it flattens me in the parking lot.
Sounds like Nirvana. I’d be so happy.
Maybe my heirs could move to Costa Rica.
Working with entitled people can jade your perspective, don’t you know?
February 27, 2008 at 5:16 pm
If you’re going to rural Mexico, take some notebooks and pencils along to give away.
If you’re going to Belize, take a shitload of lures and tackle to give to your guide.
It costs us nothing, but is invaluable to a local kid.
Who they gonna remember? Someone who gave thing something neat? Or someone who bombed the hell out of them?
.
February 27, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I do a lot of bitching on the internets about poorly constructed graphics, but this one takes the cake. This is the single most baffling chart I’ve ever seen. Some country names and flags surrounded by unlabeled numbers and colored triangles. It’s very pretty, but more or less meaningless.
And in the event anyone plans to tell me that I should go to the linked article(s?) to figure out what all this means, well, with all due respect, blow me. If it’s worth cutting and pasting this data into your web site, it’s worth cutting and pasting the god damned legend. If you can’t be bothered to bring along the information I need to interpret this graphic, I’ll be damned if I going to go chasing it down.
February 27, 2008 at 6:35 pm
It’s important to have hobbies.
February 27, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Sean Peters, BFD. If you’re not interested enough in the subject to follow the links why bother posting a comment?
Editor, I am finding this all quite amusing.
February 28, 2008 at 9:05 am
You Know what’s stupid? Everything I don’t understand.
February 28, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Arguing over what Megan McArdle meant when she wrote something stupid and trivial is like arguing over which raindrop is biggest while you’re standing in the middle of a monsoon.
April 10, 2008 at 12:11 pm
“…arguing over which raindrop is biggest while you’re standing in the middle of a monsoon.”
The one that hit my left eye. ;)
Editor: I have to agree that the poster on Brad DeLong’s blog got it right.
“Deep poverty is a man old at 50 sleeping on the floor of a mudbrick hut while a single chicken scrabbles in the dirt. It’s row after row of two-story cinderblock shacks clinging to a hillside, without glass in the windows in the freezing nights, no electricity, no running water, unpaved alleys for streets, nothing but people in rags in the doorways. It’s a family digging for potatoes with sticks in a stony field. It’s a mother filling a water jug 100 yards downstream from a latrine. It’s a filthy child eating a half a roll from a garbage can. It’s a twenty-year old woman lying on a mat, coughing her lungs out from tuberculosis. It’s a cardboard coffin eighteen inches long. Deep poverty is hideous. No one who has ever seen it could call it picturesque”(Bloix, February 26, 2008.
The only thing I have to add is that cinderblock buildings are warmer than your standard wood framed houses. They may be ugly, but it takes at least 100 years for cement to disintegrate.