At 09:40 AM 05/12/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>Certainly, Cuba would have done quite well in the absence of both Soviet
>subsidies and intervention from the United States. The main subsidy to
>Cuba was sugar. The Soviets paid a fixed-price, which was often above the
>world price, but I think that sometimes it was below the world price.
and even these subsidies have costs. Not only did it encourage Cuba's
continued dependency on sugar exports, but it encouraged Cuba to toe the
Soviet Party Line, which wasn't always a good thing for the Cuban people.
I notice that after the subsidy went away, there was a wave of creativity
in order to deal with the resulting problems. In some ways, it was a return
to the early days of the revolution, when there was a similar wave of
creativity aimed at solving other problems.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
