Are They Poor?

It's the most common question I'm getting asked by my friends and coworkers about Cuba now that I've returned. Take a look at the picture of a Havana market and the video of a typical busy street on the outskirts of Havana and decide for yourself if Cuba looks like a poverty-ridden country.

My answer is always somewhere along these lines: they have a lower standard of living and make do with less than the average American is used to. But then I always say, "BUT."

BUT I saw no sign, anywhere, in neighborhoods shabby and spiffy, areas rural and urban, of anyone who had "fallen through the cracks." No homeless people sleeping on cardboard boxes like Market Street in San Diego. No mentally ill being dumped on Skid Row by uncaring hospital workers like Los Angeles. No dirty-faced hungry toddlers peddling Chiclets to passersby like Tijuana. No walls being built to keep slum-dwellers away from the well-to-do like Rio de Janeiro. No heartless teens beating a sleeping vagabond to death like Fort Lauderdale.

There were also no homeless shelters or circus tents devoted to the homeless -- because there were no homeless.

So, while communism in Cuba is kind of a drag to live under in some ways, from what I saw it has effectively eliminated some of the things about capitalism that are a total drag.