Ken said the following:
>COMMENT: Agreed that the Cuban economy is in considerable trouble
>surely two of the main causes of this are: i) the US led isolation
>of the Cuban economy from profitable export markets, even to the point
>of alienating the US's own trading partners through extraterritorial
>application of US law.ii) the collapse of
>the USSR and beneficial trade relationships with the former communist
>countries. These much more than central planning seems to be the cause
>of Cuba's present woes.
>
Well we have to be careful to net out causality here. logically (another ploy
coming up which is used by academics! - eh louis):
(1) cuba made progress despite the usa blockade. so that hasn't changed.
(2) it could have been central planning.
(3) it could have been the fact that they were basically a dependent state of
the USSR.
(4) when the sugar markets collapsed there, and the aid dried up, cuba stumbles
badly, central planning or not.
(5) so what did central planning have to do with anything?
that is the question. my bet is that central planning did not necessarily lead
to any growth scenarios in cuba. its impact might have been more on equity and
civilised interactions b/tw people. the multipliers coming from the strong USSR
presence in the economy would have kicked irrespective of the type of
allocation and distribution system.
kind regards
bill
--
#### ## William F. Mitchell
####### #### Head of Economics Department
################# University of Newcastle
#################### New South Wales, Australia
###################* E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
################### Phone: +61 49 215065
##### ## ### +61 49 215027
Fax: +61 49 216919
## http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/~bill/billyhp.html
