Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[eppie]

Again, none of this is to deny the accomplishments of Cuba, some of which are impressive, especially given the deprivation of the "special period". And Latin America on the whole has done badly, which raises questions about the appropriate counterfactual. Nonetheless, there are serious problems with the Cuban economy, and they have fallen from being much richer than their neighbours (and still more literate, and longer-lived, that has always been true, even before Castro) to being relatively poor.

-Jester

Yes indeed, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union they were left even more isolated.
And here we are directly at a point i have made many times.....and isolated communist state, especially when it is a small country, will of course always have difficulties......not because of it being communist, but because of the countries surrounding it have attraction to citizen who just like all of us would rather be rich and decadent.
This sadly 'requires' to take away freedom, because otherwise your country would collapse.
But besides that I have always been impressed with the way they handled things. And it is clear that Castro should never been compared to e.g. the Kims in North Korea. And of course in these states there is always a ruling class (unlike real power of the people) but I have the idea that especially compared to that class in other countries (communist AND capitalist) in Cuba they are not scandalously enriching themselves.


So yes OF COURSE Cuba will never top GDP rankings when they have problems trading with other countries. But again their life expectancy is just impressive........especially if you think about how much we westerners pay as a society to for example keep terminal patients alive for an extra month or so. (indicating that for us a long life is one of the most important things.....more important than GDP at least).

---

What about (and I Wikipedia'd this) a lower infant mortality number than the USA, or the third highest life expectancy of the America's.

Correlation <> causality.

I've argued before that US infant mortality is tied to factors where the US also leads, such as drug use, and lower age of pregnancies. So, on the further end of the freedom scale, we suffer in the US from an unhealthy excess of liberty.

Of course but nobody needs a sum-up of all things bad in a typical dictatorship.
But honestly if you would really compare it to a country in which your birthplace and color of skin are directly correlated to your life expectancy, the chance you will become a teen mom, the chance you will get certain diseases etc.


The whole point is here that I think it is unfair to use Cuba as example of failed communism.