4 ms·

> In tragic irony, unskilled workers were often far better off financially than highly-educated ones, and many of the latter dropped out of their careers to cle

by tdeck 5y ago

> In tragic irony, unskilled workers were often far better off financially than highly-educated ones, and many of the latter dropped out of their careers to clean tables or pick people up from the airport to get access to the CUC economy. The dual currency system institutionalized inequality, creating clear classes of haves and have nots. For many people like Lucia, this as much as anything else showed that the revolution was a sham. The second part of this paragraph feels like a really weird framing of the first part. As far as I can tell: - workers in what the author considers less-skilled jobs are making more than those in higher skilled jobs - some workers are quitting to take up these "unskilled" jobs, and it appears they're fully able to do so On the one hand, it seems the incentives aren't great for people to work in certain professions. On the other, it's kind of hard to argue that there's a fundamental class struggle going on here when a doctor can join the "privileged" class by simply quitting their job and wiping tables. Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).

choeger 5y ago
It slowly bleeds the countrie's economy dry. I witnessed the problem first hand when visiting Cuba: Rented a car and a driver for a private tour of Havanna and the driver was absolutely fluent in English. Like, better then me, close to native speaker, with only a slight accent. So I was complimenting him and asked, where he learned it. I was expecting something like really good language courses, because the typical Cuban would not be able to visit English-speaking countries. Turns out, the guy was a former high-level manager in the state-owned tourist company and basically responsible for marketing/sales in Europe. He decided to drive a car when he learned that the lady cleaning his office actually earned more than him. Obviously he became a great guide, to my benefit, but imagine the loss for the Cuban economy as a whole. Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  What's the difference between that story and the tons of smart people trying to create dark patterns to trick people into clicking ads instead of researching and developing great things?
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    The "contempt for efficiency" disaster also has other sides: all the time you lose to navigate into what should have been done properly in the first place.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Most people consider smart people diverted to creating dark patterns, to be a bad thing. OP clearly thinks the tourist-dual ecconomy thing in Cuba is bad (for cuba as a whole). So why should there be a difference? If person A says X is bad, and person B says Y is the same as X, and everyone thinks Y is also bad, where is the contradiction? Its not like there can only be one bad thing in the world.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    Pulling a chair onto the beach for someone actually has value?
  - noduerme 5y ago
    This seems like whataboutism. Sure, capitalism creates some warped incentive structures - e.g. public schoolteachers being underpaid - but the Cuban government goes out of its way to royally screw anyone who tries to educate themselves or to create anything. Even the fact that we have a choice to create great things or create antipatterns presupposes that the free market draws people to acquire skills in the first place.
tpm 5y ago
> Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. > It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly). So in communist Central Europe (before 1989) the situation was perhaps similar. Nominally in highest regard were hard blue-collar jobs: miners, workers in metallurgy, mechanical engineering, builders. Many of those jobs also earned much more than doctors, lawyers, managers etc. But the spread between highest and lowest wage was not big. And it was obligatory that everyone has a job. Because nearly everyone made similar amounts of money, money ceased to be that huge measure of status like it is in 'capitalism'. But that does not mean people stopped measuring and comparing each other: they just found other means to do that. Particularly, connections. There were things money could not buy (at least not legally). But once you knew the right people, much more was possible. So your status was measured with the right connections. And because many basic things were hard to get, particularly valued connections were with people like grocers, butchers, providers of gas pipelines for heating of houses, providers of building materials and building machines (people outside of bigger towns ere mostly building their own houses) etc. But also good doctors were very valued - not by the offical health system of course, but you were supposed to bring either money or some other valuable gift in return of the favor. The favor being the doctor will see you either at all or do more that the basic necessity mandated by the system. And of course having a privileged position within the ruling communist party was the best - which is where the concentration of not very nice people was highest. The result of all this is that now, more than 30 years after the fall of communism, there is still a huge amount of corruption and favoritism in all aspects of the society, but mostly in the state structures.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
The privilege here flows from contact with tourists, who spend the more valuable, dollar-linked peso. The problem is that this distorts the ‘real’ value of certain activities: wiping tables remains a less useful activity compared to a competent lecturer, even if the stars somehow align to make it more financially rewarding.
noduerme 5y ago
As another poster said it does drain the economy, but even more directly. I don't know exactly what the Cuban government allows its party members and employees to do vis-a-vis accessing foreign currency, but I can give the Argentine example. Argentina used to have currency controls that pegged their peso at 3ARS/1USD. If you were a tourist with $100 USD and you need to buy pesos at the airport, you get 300ARS. If you go to anyone on the street in Buenos Aires, they'd give you the black market rate, about 1300ARS for the same $100USD. Okay fine, so no one is stupid enough to sell dollars at the government exchange rate. But where it gets strange is, when you want to buy dollars for your pesos. To support the fiction of their artificial rate, Argentines were allowed to buy $100 for 300ARS... but only in tiny, tiny quantities. In fact this is what their ATM cards would get them if they traveled to the US. But the max for their entire trip was something like $200 and they had to pay a 100% import duty on everything they purchased abroad. And now for the knockout punch: If you worked for the government, you could have 20% of your salary converted to USD every month at the official rate. Where did these cheap dollars come from? The treasury's quickly dwindling strategic dollar reserve. However, in order to keep the government employees at this level, they had to keep the peso at the same official exchange while in reality it devalued more and more. And where did those dollars out of the treasury go when they got into the hands of government employees? Into banks in Miami. To be clear, no one worked to get this wealth, it was a favor for being part of the party in power. People who worked got fucked because in the end their life savings in pesos became worthless in any other currency. To stop this from getting out of hand, the government then instituted price controls to keep the price in pesos steady on certain goods produced in the country, mainly beef, bread, etc. But those food producers could make much more selling their produce abroad, and the government had lucrative deals with China and other countries, so they slowly reduced how much food you could buy at these artificially low prices. The stickers on items in the supermarket would show you couldn't buy more than one or two a day. Other items went up in price daily. This is how a dual currency system bleeds an economy, by funneling most of the citizens' wealth into the bank accounts of a corrupt government elite who do nothing more than manipulate the currency to drain the nation dry.

by tdeck 5y ago

choeger 5y ago

It slowly bleeds the countrie's economy dry. I witnessed the problem first hand when visiting Cuba: Rented a car and a driver for a private tour of Havanna and the driver was absolutely fluent in English. Like, better then me, close to native speaker, with only a slight accent. So I was complimenting him and asked, where he learned it. I was expecting something like really good language courses, because the typical Cuban would not be able to visit English-speaking countries. Turns out, the guy was a former high-level manager in the state-owned tourist company and basically responsible for marketing/sales in Europe. He decided to drive a car when he learned that the lady cleaning his office actually earned more than him. Obviously he became a great guide, to my benefit, but imagine the loss for the Cuban economy as a whole. Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?

jbverschoor 5y ago
What's the difference between that story and the tons of smart people trying to create dark patterns to trick people into clicking ads instead of researching and developing great things?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  The "contempt for efficiency" disaster also has other sides: all the time you lose to navigate into what should have been done properly in the first place.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Most people consider smart people diverted to creating dark patterns, to be a bad thing. OP clearly thinks the tourist-dual ecconomy thing in Cuba is bad (for cuba as a whole). So why should there be a difference? If person A says X is bad, and person B says Y is the same as X, and everyone thinks Y is also bad, where is the contradiction? Its not like there can only be one bad thing in the world.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Pulling a chair onto the beach for someone actually has value?
- noduerme 5y ago
  This seems like whataboutism. Sure, capitalism creates some warped incentive structures - e.g. public schoolteachers being underpaid - but the Cuban government goes out of its way to royally screw anyone who tries to educate themselves or to create anything. Even the fact that we have a choice to create great things or create antipatterns presupposes that the free market draws people to acquire skills in the first place.

tpm 5y ago

> Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. > It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly). So in communist Central Europe (before 1989) the situation was perhaps similar. Nominally in highest regard were hard blue-collar jobs: miners, workers in metallurgy, mechanical engineering, builders. Many of those jobs also earned much more than doctors, lawyers, managers etc. But the spread between highest and lowest wage was not big. And it was obligatory that everyone has a job. Because nearly everyone made similar amounts of money, money ceased to be that huge measure of status like it is in 'capitalism'. But that does not mean people stopped measuring and comparing each other: they just found other means to do that. Particularly, connections. There were things money could not buy (at least not legally). But once you knew the right people, much more was possible. So your status was measured with the right connections. And because many basic things were hard to get, particularly valued connections were with people like grocers, butchers, providers of gas pipelines for heating of houses, providers of building materials and building machines (people outside of bigger towns ere mostly building their own houses) etc. But also good doctors were very valued - not by the offical health system of course, but you were supposed to bring either money or some other valuable gift in return of the favor. The favor being the doctor will see you either at all or do more that the basic necessity mandated by the system. And of course having a privileged position within the ruling communist party was the best - which is where the concentration of not very nice people was highest. The result of all this is that now, more than 30 years after the fall of communism, there is still a huge amount of corruption and favoritism in all aspects of the society, but mostly in the state structures.

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

The privilege here flows from contact with tourists, who spend the more valuable, dollar-linked peso. The problem is that this distorts the ‘real’ value of certain activities: wiping tables remains a less useful activity compared to a competent lecturer, even if the stars somehow align to make it more financially rewarding.

noduerme 5y ago

As another poster said it does drain the economy, but even more directly. I don't know exactly what the Cuban government allows its party members and employees to do vis-a-vis accessing foreign currency, but I can give the Argentine example. Argentina used to have currency controls that pegged their peso at 3ARS/1USD. If you were a tourist with $100 USD and you need to buy pesos at the airport, you get 300ARS. If you go to anyone on the street in Buenos Aires, they'd give you the black market rate, about 1300ARS for the same $100USD. Okay fine, so no one is stupid enough to sell dollars at the government exchange rate. But where it gets strange is, when you want to buy dollars for your pesos. To support the fiction of their artificial rate, Argentines were allowed to buy $100 for 300ARS... but only in tiny, tiny quantities. In fact this is what their ATM cards would get them if they traveled to the US. But the max for their entire trip was something like $200 and they had to pay a 100% import duty on everything they purchased abroad. And now for the knockout punch: If you worked for the government, you could have 20% of your salary converted to USD every month at the official rate. Where did these cheap dollars come from? The treasury's quickly dwindling strategic dollar reserve. However, in order to keep the government employees at this level, they had to keep the peso at the same official exchange while in reality it devalued more and more. And where did those dollars out of the treasury go when they got into the hands of government employees? Into banks in Miami. To be clear, no one worked to get this wealth, it was a favor for being part of the party in power. People who worked got fucked because in the end their life savings in pesos became worthless in any other currency. To stop this from getting out of hand, the government then instituted price controls to keep the price in pesos steady on certain goods produced in the country, mainly beef, bread, etc. But those food producers could make much more selling their produce abroad, and the government had lucrative deals with China and other countries, so they slowly reduced how much food you could buy at these artificially low prices. The stickers on items in the supermarket would show you couldn't buy more than one or two a day. Other items went up in price daily. This is how a dual currency system bleeds an economy, by funneling most of the citizens' wealth into the bank accounts of a corrupt government elite who do nothing more than manipulate the currency to drain the nation dry.