Socialist economy and travel destinations

Cuba has been a great experiment on socialist economic planning. Ruled by a government with only one political party and not plurality of views, it always meant a "command economy". Their system also had the convenient excuse of the US embargo to cover up for its own shortfalls, inefficiencies, and corruption. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union and their yearly subsidies, in the 1990s all plunged to chaos. Today, things are worse.

According to official figures, inflation stood at 77% in 2021, then dropped to 31% in 2023. But for the average Cuban, the official figures barely reflect the reality of their lives, since market inflation can reach up to three digits on the informal market. For example, a carton of eggs, which sold for 300 Cuban pesos in 2019, these days sells for about 3,100 pesos.
The monthly salary for Cuban state workers ranges between 5,000 and 7,000 Cuban pesos (between $14 and $20 in the parallel market).

          (Source here.)

And then you have a piece of travel journalism about a destination where most people don't have enough money to eat, less yet to travel. What a dichotomy. 

Albert Einstein got it wrong. 

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

          (Source: "Why Socialism?", 1949.)

Theories work very well on paper, but reality and human behavior are different things. Just ask the Cubans. They will tell you where the egalitarianism of socialism begins and where it ends.

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