Cuba's Economic System

On January 8th, 1959, Fidel Castro and his rebel army marched triumphantly into Havana, Cuba, having overthrown corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista the week earlier. It was the fruition of the Cuban Revolution, and the dramatic shift in power was about to radically alter the country’s political, social and economic course forever. The positive and negative effects of the revolution on the Cuban people, however, as well as the condition of Cuba’s economy pre and post-revolution, is subject to heated debate. Castro’s iron-fisted regime was the introduction of communism into the western hemisphere, and now, over fifty years later, the Cuban Revolution continues to be one of the most controversial events of the twentieth century. Despite the criticism levelled at Fidel Castro and his communist regime, however, the Cuban Revolution was necessary in improving the quality of life for the majority of Cuban citizens. The four fundamental categories on which to assess this are healthcare, education, economy and governance. By comparing the country’s overall performance under Fulgencio Batista versus under Fidel Castro in these areas crucial to a fully-functioning nation, it can be shown that the Cuban Revolution was a necessary and positive change in Cuban society which benefitted the majority of citizens.

Cuba’s colorful history can be documented to before the days of the American Revolution in 1776, but today, American policy directly affects many Cubans’ lifestyles because of a nearly 45-year-old trade embargo that has been placed on the island nation. It is crucial to analyze the development of Cuba and its neighboring island nations in order to discern the reasons for Cuba’s current political situation with the United States. The following paper will discuss the events that shaped Cuba and larger Caribbean nations like Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica; next, a detailed description of Cuba’s turbulent history will help in explaining the Cuban transformation into a

Cuba and the United States of America have completely opposite economies. Cuba’s economy is based on the few natural resources that the country owns while the economic system in The United States is capitalist and can be recognized for its noticeable development in agriculture, energy, and other resources that keep the country expanding and provides jobs as well as a good quality of life for its residents. On the other hand, Cuba’s economy, is predominantly poor, to the point where a very huge percent of its population suffers from

In 1959, Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba and the country turned from dictatorship to a communist state. The Cuban socioeconomics follow that of other Communist cultures for example the Soviet Union, where the government is in control all parts of its citizen’s way of life. In most recent years, Raul Castro has setup many reforms that benefit the people. The reforms are:

Modern Cuba is a country born of struggle. The revolutionary movement that formed the modern day government has remained in power for more than forty years. Indeed, the Cuban government is perhaps one of the most stable governments in the region. This fact is made even more evident by the recent fall of democracy in Haiti. However, the past ten years has seen a marked change in Cuban economic policy. Ostracized from the international community and faced with an embargo imposed by the United States, Cuba has turned to various sources of economic reform in order to survive in a global market.

Cuba is representative of a different type of society which has in many ways, not embraced modern technology due to the embargo and the lack of imports into the country; therefore, it falls behind in many areas due to strict government control and limits the ability of its people to experience meaningful economic growth (The Heritage Foundation, 2017). In this context, the people of Cuba face significant challenges because they cannot seek opportunities for growth and development which have a significant impact on their incomes and families (The Heritage Foundation, 2017). From this perspective, there are important considerations to make regarding the Cuban economy and its lasting impact on limiting economic prosperity for its people (The Heritage Foundation, 2017).

Considering the circumstances of the embargo, Cuba has been able to sustain itself working around the minimum number of products they could get. Due to all the difficulties and not being able to trade with the United States, Cuba had to learn to stand on its own... the fact that they were limited in resources, forced by their circumstances, the Cuban people had to take their creativity and transform it into a survival skill. The embargo in a way brought a great deal of evolution to the

In the U.S. the Government still maintains some control of factors of production and responsibility to maintain a steady economic pace. It uses a mix of two types of economic policies for achieving economic stability, fiscal policy and monetary policy. The congress established that monetary policy to promote effectively maximum employment, stable prices and interest rates is to be the main objective of the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central banking

From the reasons behind the voices asking for lifting the embargo on Cuba is its Economic impacts on the U.S. economy. Some politician’s opinion is that beside the failure of the embargo in achieving democracy in Cuba and removing Castro regime, the embargo harms the U.S. economy as well. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the embargo, stating that the U.S. policies impose real costs, and according to a study by Taxes A&M University in 2010, removing restrictions on the agricultural products exported to Cuba and lifting travel ban would increase the U.S. exports by $365 million and create 6000 new jobs in the United States. Also, some experts believe that lifting the embargo would benefit agriculture, telecommunications, tourism, and construction sectors.

Cuba is island right under the Florida coast in the Carrabin. Home to nearly 11 and a half million people. 90% of which speak Spanish and the other 10% percent speak either Haitian Creole, Lucimi, Galician, or Corsican. The male and female population count have been fairly close together for the past few years males at 51 percent and females at 49 percent. A Few year were right through the middle. A female life expectancy is close to 82 years while a male’s life expectancy is close to 78 years in Cuba. Age group of 0-14 years old are 19.1 percent of the country’s population, and age’s 15-64 is just over 70 percent, and the other 10.9

For companies looking to expand their markets and entertaining the idea of doing business in Cuba, international managers must understand the unique set of advantages and disadvantages that this country represents before committing to that course of action, U.S. companies must first realize that the business embargo that has been in place for decades, and indeed despite loosening og parts of the embargo by the Obama administration, the future of those steps or even more business friendly thawing are not givens with the Trump administration.

The economy is largely state-controlled with 75% of the labor force employed by the government. Cuban government consists of three branches stipulated in the Constitution of Cuba: The judiciary, executive, and legislature. The Executive Branch consists of two bodies know has the Council of Ministers and the Executive Committee Secretary. Legislative Branch hold meetings twice a year and are responsible for issues affecting the Cuban economy, industries, constructions, defense, public health, and foreign affairs. In the Judicial Branch, the Supreme Court is known as the highest court.

The economic system faces many complicated demanding situations in keeping its social and monetary project and retaining the capacity to increase the well-being of its population. Social and monetary distortions should be confronted, and time is short. internal factors that preserve to constrain financial increase ought to be triumph over in the quick to medium term. Among them are shortages of hard forex, inflicting customer needs to go unmet. Cuba’s manufacturing specialization should be changed notably, from an economic system based on the exploitation of natural assets to at least one based on the in-depth use of understanding. Cuba’s sturdy potential in understanding-extensive development does no longer via itself assure positive outcomes. The strategic mission is to grow, as different advantages derive from growth. however, new springboards should be found to grow production. Overall performance is declining in sectors and activities such as tourism that have been used to growth manufacturing inside the past. Cuba needs to address a number of daunting challenges. these include expanding and diversifying exports, growing investment stages, terminating the monetary and institutional dualism, developing the precise environment for self-employment and small and medium scale company, and addressing different institutional and coverage problems and information

Lastly, another underlying factor of dependency of Soviet bloc as a factor that Cuba adopt self-sufficiency production as its food security policy was due to the overreliance on fuel. As stated previously, almost all of Cuba’s fuel were imported from the Soviet and its associates. The country was heavily dependent on oil for almost all of it economic purpose. Which ranges from household purposes to industrial needs. Agriculture production hold the highest segregation of the usage of fuel for Cuba. As fuel was use for machinery for the cultivation of crops. For an oil-dependent state, they remained vulnerable to it. As the state fall into a mode of sustainability, it is stated mode of public transportation was halted and Cubans went into hunger