Cuba’s humane policy

Where in the world today is unemployment only 1.8 percent, and every 2009 student graduate found a job? “In Cuba,” reported Raymundo Navarro of the International Department of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (Central Trabajadores de Cuba) at a labor conference in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 5.

Yet Cuba’s socialist economy is not isolated from the effects of the global capitalist economic crisis. The price of Cuba’s main exports, sugar and nickel, plummeted disastrously while the price of food imports spiked.

Sugar production for export became so impractical when the international price of sugar dropped to two-tenths of a cent per pound that most of the sugar mills were closed, ending 150,000 jobs. A workers’ study program originally proposed by former president Fidel Castro continues to offer displaced workers 100 percent of their current pay rate while they train for another trade or even decide to enroll in the university, Navarro explained.

In 2009, 186,000 students graduated. Navarro commented, “We openly challenge the bootlickers and imperialists to find one of those students who didn’t get a job — not one could they find. The unemployment level in Cuba is 1.8 percent despite the economy.”

Moreover, not one of those Cuban graduates is weighed down with student loan debt either as all education in Cuba is free.

In a capitalist economy, the only investment worth making is the investment that will bring the highest profit. Investing in human development — especially in the era of a “jobless” capitalist economic recovery — is a liability for the corporations, not an asset.

In socialist Cuba where gains and losses are shared by all, the development of human potential benefits all of society and is valued as an asset no matter the cost. That’s how and why the Cubans do it.