"His regime remained popular with workers, peasants, and students...

"His regime remained popular with workers, peasants, and students, who constituted the majority of the country's population,[139] while opposition came primarily from the middle class; thousands of doctors, engineers and other professionals emigrated to Florida in the U.S., causing an economic brain drain."

Why? Why do communists countries always are behind technologically ?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba–Venezuela_relations
twitter.com/AnonBabble

The US gives citizenship to any Cuban arriving on its shores. Salaries for doctors and engineers are much better in the US than in Cuba. How is it surprising many want to move?

How can communism even compete then?

By killing those who give salaries.

And yet Cuba is now exporting doctors to the entire world. Go figure.

explain

By not pissing around with wages.

Braindrain is a problem for any poor country, regardless of its system. When they can, the brightest leave for better opportunities, which is great for the receiving country but not so much for those they leave behind. Can't say I know a solution. You can of course increase the salary, but that means you can afford fewer doctors. Increasing the salary to compete with American doctors would be suicidal for not just Cuba but pretty much any country outside Europe and Japan.

Cuba has many good doctors. They don't have the best tech like the US does, but they can do plenty and don't cost an arm and a leg. So Cuba exchanges healthcare for goods and cash. I don't know if it's still ongoing, but Cuba sent doctors to Venezuela in exchange of oil, sent doctors to Brazil for cash, and sends them to Africa too (I think for cheap since they can't pay much, but I'm not sure).

How does that even work. Who pays them exactly? I mean i am pretty sure being given a shitton of oil isnt that useful since they dont need that much themselves.

Who chooses the value of the oil? Is the government paying the doctors in venezuela? Fuck communism is confusing

Not communism, they're just making trade deals. Basically, Cuba is just sending a bunch of doctors to work in practices in those countries and in return they get money or beneficial deals or whatever they decide on.

Take a look at this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism

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They're decided between the Cuban and Venezuelan negotiators. I'm sure they take the market value into account, but Venezuela heavily discounts it for Cuba. You can see this as they playing nice or building a good trade relationship.
From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba–Venezuela_relations the numbers for 2000 (later increased) were:
- Venezuela sends 53k barrels of oil per day
- Cuba provides them with 30k-50k physicians, teachers, etc
Later they increased the partnership, with Cuba providing training and receiving more oil. I don't know how it is now that Venezuela is pretty much fucked.
It's the exact same as if it were a company instead. The Cuban doctors are employees of the Cuban government, so they're paid by the Cuban government according to their contract (from what I know they get some money and their family in Cuba get some money as well). The Cuban government signed a contract with the Venezuelan government, who pays them according to the agreed amount in exchange for the services provided.

That didn't contribute anything, other than a dick measuring contest. The Soviet Union made it first to the moon anyway

Comrades, where's that pic comparing Soviet and US "firsts".
To cut a long story short: The Soviet Union came first in pretty much anything but the moon landing (don't even know if they even attempted it), and the moon landing was pretty much just a vanity project compared to the way more practical accomplishments that the Soviets were leaders in and still are. It's the Soyuz space capsules which ferry astronauts to the ISS (the American space shuttles exploded).

Accidental sage

What was the political system during that space race era? And how did they manage to beat the US?

State Capitalism
No idea.

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The Soviets had a real cool moon colony project they scrapped to compete with the space shuttle, producing the failed Buran. They wrongly thought the US had a good use for the shuttle and they couldn't afford not to have a similar vehicle.

The fuck?
Do they mean per day? Because no fuckign way anyone gets paid that per MONTHS

Well, most countries' currencies aren't worth as much as the US'. That probably drags the average down, so it is possible.
Still, it seems pretty dubious. Checking the source.

Over half of global population lives under 2 US dollars per day.

I live in greece and people barely scrap by because low tier jobs barely pay 500-700EU per month

While i as a 2nd mate get 5k per month, i mean that doesnt make sense unless money had much differnet value back then

Here's the source

The article is from 2008. While Greece is a poor country, it's still in the Eurozone, and the Euro is a pretty high-value currency. 183$ can go a long way in countries with less valuable currencies.
Still, this is just speculation on my part.

In part by emancipating people from all the negative health effects endemic to life under capitalism. I know it's shocking, but it turns out when people aren't working three jobs, eating preprocessed foods, and are constantly stressed from impending financial ruin, they are actually much healthier.

In fact, I wonder if you could correlate rising obesity rates with the decline in wages. It seems like both trends started about the same time. I should really look for health stats for Soviet citizens as well compared to their American counterparts.

Obesity is mainly caused by capitalism letting companies do whatever they want, everything tasty is unhealthy because not only it is cheap they add addictive chemicals that let you enjoy something more artificially.

Also that being cheap and accessible and it is really easy to get all soft, round and cuddly

Would the same happen under communism? I dont think so because the main reason behind manipulating food like that is mass profit

Ideally I would say it wouldn't happen under communism. Without the market pressure to constantly use cheaper materials etc while increasing revenue, I would think the general tendency would be to creating the best food possible, if only because the people making it are the ones that are going to be eating it.

I think part of the equation too is that cooking is a skill the transmission of which has been severely disrupted since the mid 20th century, and many people simply don't know how, and it can be expensive in time and materials for the working poor, if they even have the energy to want to learn. I would imagine that when they aren't worried about messing up a meal and potentially ruining a bunch of food and wasting their time, they're more likely to experiment with what they make.

Cuban wages are pretty low.


I'm pretty sure that no doctor in Venezuela earns around $200/month.