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City Journal
For what it's worth, my wife visited Cuba in 1998 and confirms all of this. In those days you could rent a Toyota and drive anywhere in Cuba you liked, but you could not find a place to eat or get gasoline outside of the international zone. Ordinary Cubans were afraid to talk with or do business with you. She and her companion finally convinced a restaurant manager to let them eat there, but they had to sneak in the back way, and all they had to eat was rice, beans, and pork. They had 3 shifts of mechanics working on the rental cars but they didn't have any tools aside from a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.
[...]In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage—$20 a month for almost every job in the country. (Professionals such as doctors and lawyers can make a whopping $10 extra a month.) Sure, Cubans get “free” health care and education, but as Cuban exile and Yale historian Carlos Eire says, “All slave owners need to keep their slaves healthy and ensure that they have the skills to perform their tasks.”
Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble don’t get paid more. The government contracts with Spanish companies such as Meliá International to manage Havana’s hotels. Before accepting its contract, Meliá said that it wanted to pay workers a decent wage. The Cuban government said fine, so the company pays $8–$10 an hour. But Meliá doesn’t pay its employees directly. Instead, the firm gives the compensation to the government, which then pays the workers—but only after pocketing most of the money. I asked several Cubans in my hotel if that arrangement is really true. All confirmed that it is. The workers don’t get $8–$10 an hour; they get 67 cents a day—a child’s allowance.
The maximum wage is just the beginning. Not only are most Cubans not allowed to have money; they’re hardly allowed to have things. The police expend extraordinary manpower ensuring that everyone required to live miserably at the bottom actually does live miserably at the bottom.[...]
For what it's worth, my wife visited Cuba in 1998 and confirms all of this. In those days you could rent a Toyota and drive anywhere in Cuba you liked, but you could not find a place to eat or get gasoline outside of the international zone. Ordinary Cubans were afraid to talk with or do business with you. She and her companion finally convinced a restaurant manager to let them eat there, but they had to sneak in the back way, and all they had to eat was rice, beans, and pork. They had 3 shifts of mechanics working on the rental cars but they didn't have any tools aside from a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.