From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Fri May 09 1997 - 11:13:11 MDT
> From: Erik Moeller <flagg@oberberg-online.de>
>
> John K Clark wrote:
>
> > If you can find some shred of objectivity that the socialism meme
> > has not destroyed, ask yourself this question, why is the raft
> > traffic 100% (and I don't mean 99%) from south to north rather
> > than the reverse?
>
> Quite simple.
>
> 1) Media propaganda.
In Cuba? [Peals of laughter are heard].
Yeah, there is plenty of government propaganda in Cuba. Very little of
it that I am aware of claims the U.S. is a better place to live.
> 2) Financial support by US secret services -- many exile Cubans indeed
> have a better life in the US today. Cubans are among the least likely to
> become poor.
So, you are claiming that most Cuban exiles are being paid by the CIA?
All of the millions of them? [Peals of laughter].
Lets see. To support just one million Cubans, one needs only, lets be
conservative and say we'll only give each $10,000 a year in secret
checks. (Never mind how hard it would be to try to hide that a million
people were getting secret checks, and never mind that you need more
money than that to live well in the U.S.) That is about ten BILLION a
year -- a lot more than the entire CIA budget.
> Yet it has a child mortality of a level comparable to that of
> industrialized free market economies (8, if I remember correctly,
> and the US got about 7).
Get real.
Cuba is so badly off today that animals and in some cases people are
being used to plow the fields. (One article I read derisively noted
that the Cubans don't even have proper yokes for their oxen.) Half of
the young women in the country are out trying to prostitute themselves
to tourists to try to make enough money to survive. (That isn't a joke
-- I'm being literal.) People living in a country where food
practically grows on trees have trouble getting enough to eat
well. One of the few things relieving the crushing poverty is the
constant inflow of dollars from tourists and overseas Cubans. Doctors
fight for the chance to become bellhops at tourist hotels, because it
pays so much better.
Maybe you can fool yourself, but its very hard to fool us.
Perry
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