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Are there practical differences between ownership and indefinite lease? I mean can the lease be cancelled or terms changed unilaterally?
ownership != sovereign soil
I've visited Cuba on a Canadian passport. Aside from the beautiful beaches the thing that struck me most was the desperate poverty of people living in shacks outside the 5 star resorts. While I hesitate to predict that this change will be all for the good, I do believe that the poorest in Cuba will benefit significantly from increased trade.
On the other hand: - average life expectancy in Cuba is almost the same as the USA (and higher than Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Brazil, etc.). - literacy rate in Cuba is higher than that in the USA - Physicians per 10,000 people: Cuba has 67, USA has 24 In the Ebola crisis, Cuba has been leading from the front.
As engineers we would never compare uptime statistics from a small, niche startup serving a couple thousand people to uptime statistics from, say, Google. Why do we immediately ignore these principles outside of engineering?
Edit: wording
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Can you explain the housing ownership battle? Is this related to foreigners (to Cuba) who owned houses in Cuba before 1959?
Exiles who left the country. If you were to speak to elderly Cubans who fled they would tell you about how they all had their possessions taken from them.
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It's not nitpicking when it is what provides the legal foundation for Gitmo in the first place.
Are there practical differences between ownership and indefinite lease? I mean can the lease be cancelled or terms changed unilaterally?
(I'm having trouble finding something to link that is not charged, but I think that is a fair characterization of it)
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http://www.wired.com/2010/04/cuban-health-lessons/ "Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet collapse in international support, the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat our own. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more…
"There are shortages of medicines, and the best care is reserved for elites." Nice healthcare system!
Elites, in other words.
This is actually (amusingly) incredibly unpopular in cigar circles who are calling this the "end of an era". Most discussions seems to center around the doom and gloom of quality dropping and prices increasing as the US/Cuban cigar market opens and the demand for CC increases. No discussion on the legality of owning CC changing amusingly. As apparently everyone forgets that smoking a Cuban Cigar can be considered an…
Prices of American cars from the fifties will drop, too. Longer-term, I also expect fierce legal battles over the ownership of houses on Cuba.
I expect the Cuban government will concede on a few national-level items (like legitimacy of the Guantanamo base) in exchange for the US government publicly affirming that any ownership claim from US businesses and individuals pre-revolution will be considered null and void. Anything else would be complete madness. Apart from difficulty in tracking original documents (which were likely destroyed during and after the revolution), handing nationalised assets to US citizens would mine the economic power base of the ruling elite in Cuba.
Consider hotels: they power one of the few sizeable economic activities on the island, i.e. tourism; but any hotel built before the revolution (and there are quite a few, all around the island) would have to revert to (likely US) previous owners, instantly transferring a lot of wealth out of the island. Not gonna happen.
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"There are shortages of medicines, and the best care is reserved for elites." Nice healthcare system!
Please explain how that's any different than the US when you can't afford medicine or care? It makes little difference whether the shortage is due to no physical supply vs not being able to afford it. If you can't get healthcare, you can't get it. http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/2014/03/26/medical-ban... “In 2013 over 20% of American adults are struggling to pay their medical bills, and three in five bankruptci…
Then I also grew up in Soviet Union, where supposedly great healthcare was developed. And I can tell you they had a horrible health care like they have it in Cuba today.
If Cuban health care is so great, where is their great health research and studies? When did they publish the last time in Lancet on in NEJM? Where is that?
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Technically wouldn't it be everyone profiting since it's going to government? If it was an foriegn business owner like alot of resorts in the bahamas, who would be profiting there? Certainly not the people living on the island.
Even in a democracy you'd be lucky if that were even 10% true. In a socialist government, even more unlikely.
I've visited Cuba on a Canadian passport. Aside from the beautiful beaches the thing that struck me most was the desperate poverty of people living in shacks outside the 5 star resorts. While I hesitate to predict that this change will be all for the good, I do believe that the poorest in Cuba will benefit significantly from increased trade.
I visited Cuba a month or so ago and one thing that struck me was the way a general lack of wealth didn't manifest it's self in a way in you'd associate with impoverished people in developed countries. The quality of the health and education systems are tangible and one of the biggest points of contention from the people I spoke to seemed to be the lack of internet.
I will be very careful with that statement. Cuba government is very good at propaganda and making people to think that.
In Venezuela we have a first hand experience about that since there is a lot of "collaboration" between both countries (basically oil in exchange of medical and education services). The result is a lot of cases about medical malpractices.
Also education is very opinionated with a strong emphasis in political indoctrination.
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On the other hand: - average life expectancy in Cuba is almost the same as the USA (and higher than Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Brazil, etc.). - literacy rate in Cuba is higher than that in the USA - Physicians per 10,000 people: Cuba has 67, USA has 24 In the Ebola crisis, Cuba has been leading from the front.
Comparing statistics from small, homogeneous populations to statistics from larger, heterogeneous populations is fraught with peril. Doubly so for metrics on education and health. (I like to call this the Scandinavian Fallacy) As engineers we would never compare uptime statistics from a small, niche startup serving a couple thousand people to uptime statistics from, say, Google. Why do we immediately ignore these pri…