Thank you for the Peak Oil video.
I end by saying that while I write critically of what I see that does not fulfill the goals of a socialist revolution, I support the country for its 50 years of resistance, for its people-s warmth, and for the true courage of so many of its people and leaders.
We in the rich west should be so lucky as to have such leaders as Fidel, Che, Camilo many others.

Comradely,
Ron
http://www.ronridenour.com

Yes, some 1.5 to 2 million people have left to live in other lands. Many return for visits bringing their families some of their wages; other send some of wages as remittances. In the latter years most people who have left Cuba do so for better wages. Most people I know in Cuba either have a member of the family living abroad or want one or more to do so simply so that they can eat and live better than their meager wages allow.

The average wage is 400=450 national pesos, the minimum is 225. One cannot buy many vegetable or no meats on that. There are few staples left on the subsidized rations: beans and rice are the main ones and that is why most people eat them and little else. One cannot buy shampoo or household items on the ration card and there are few items of need sold in peso stores. Even bicycles are sold only in convertible currency=cucs.
Most food stuff is still imported. Cuba-s revolution has not found an effectived solution to growing adequate food, although more is being grown now. But the most energetic growers are those who can earn lots of money. Raul is not boycotting capitalism, on the contrary. I fear that the nation will go more the way of China, and it is certainly entering into the Asian giant-s debt.

Yes, prolific commentator Max Shields, you are right: there is little bottom up democracy. While the Cuban government has been solidarity with its people and many millions more in 100`countries, it has not had confidence in the working class!masses to allow them to use power and make major decisions==but no government in any country ever has.

I-ll return.

Glad to hear so many voices. Sorry I haven´t answered. I´ve been in Cuba two months and internet is so slow and so costly. Now in Mexico I respond to some.

Elections

Complicated system. There is only one political party by law–the Communist Party—and it may not enter in elections. At the municipal level only individuals enter as candidates, up to eight. There is no money or announcents or advertisements nor debate. A candidate simply posts a short biography of him/herself with a photo. No issues are discussed. One votes on one´s belief in the merits of the individual.
On the provincial and national assembly levels, candidates are chosen by municipal elected delegates and mass organizations. Again no money or ads or debates. The national government is not voted upon but is chosen by the national assembly delegates. The top leaders in the State Council then chose the ministers.

Media

There is little debate and no analysis that is not official in the mass media. A few magazines and some websites (try HavanaTimes.org? exist with some critique and analysis by professional people: Caminos, Temas, La Gaceta.

I ll return.

Genocide is not based in racism, racism is founded in the desire to control and that can best be done through the ancient devise of divide and rule. Racism is not about “race” it is about ensuring that those in power are not threatened and so their greatest potential threat (from within) is conquered by creating scapegoats. In the US we saw this early on when free blacks and poor whites rose up in rebellion. The power structure quickly ended those alliances by injecting “racism” which divided whites from blacks.

In Israel, the Palestinians are regarded in much the same way as African Americans have been, not because of color or “inferiority” but because they have a natural bond to the poorer non-Pal, or non-black.

But at bottom, is the root cause, control of land. Until we get that “we” will be playing endless games and achieving nothing. As long as we believe that racism exists in us rather than simply a tool leverage to a larger “prize” we will be forever at the mercy of the power elite.

The similarity is the concentration of control over land. What they know is that all wealth comes from land – rights, licenses, patents, closure of the commons. You can trace closure of the commons to what has happened in modern times.

Latin America has struggled time and again with the distribution of land among the peasant farmers. This has failed time and again. Re-distribution is not the issue, in my opinion; in fact it exaserbates the problem of fairness and equity.

Land (natural resources) should not be “owned” by anyone. Privatizing the commons whether in the hands of a few land-owners or millions of peasants leads us to the same ends. Humans did not, as we know, make land. On the other hand, we create value based on location and investment. Farmland is relatively low in value, while dense highly developed areas with significant infrastructure is high in value.

Capturing that value and returning it to the public domain is, in fact the fairest way to distribution.

Realizing that all wealth and the monopolization of wealth comes from land allows us to create a fair and just society. It can be done if it is presented as a reform of property tax.

We all know the airwaves are part of the commons, it is licensed out to corporations and they control what we hear, see and the political dialog (and the marketing of that dialog) to the rest of us. Airwaves should never be allowed to be monopolized through privatized licensing. Just, that alone, would utterly change the political landscape.

The culture of cooperation can happen but first, we need legal and structural changes. Land is where we can begin.

Max

Of course it’s all connected, as you point out, and the ruling elite are still the ruling elite. Being back Stateside for a few holiday weeks, I was in a discussion with some friends about the underlying problem, aside from our low, collective — while possibly increasing — consciousness. A consensus was reached that we’re still being controlled by the Kings…ancient blood lines that are all linked to previous rulers and empires, powers that still hold the reigns today.

While we dare not mention the word conspiracy around Mr. Koontz, it’s safe to say that the elite’s power has been maintained through centuries of a consensus among the elite that attaining absolute power/control IS in their best interest. Hence, our discriminant monetary economic system designed to favor those who own/control, and create inherent public debt. The system leads to none other than greedy exploitation of people and their bountiful resources.

The people’s common heritage won’t be easily swayed from the kings who control them, it may well take a systemic collapse to realize that their system is unsustainable, that it poisons our environment and creates inequality about the masses.

I’ll read more on George, thanks.

Best to you.

Land = all natural resources. Controlling energy sources has been the premise for nearly all wars. The US got into WWII when it attacked Japan’s access to oil. Germany fought twice and lost to assure access to Russian oil and gas.

The US hegemony has its historical underpinnings in the peak of US oil and the need to capture and control ME oil (as well as elsewhere).

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a land grab (mostly of copper, oil and natural gas) creating the worst case of a concentration of wealth and massive poverty in Russia. Again, had Russia held back on privatizing nature’s gifts it would have had a healthy economy rather than the kind of mess that followed. The latter was accomplished with the use of so-called shock doctrine as it was used in Latin America and elsewhere.

All of this is connected. Understanding the few fundamental principles gives us the solutions. That we don’t, is because the narrative is controlled by the power elite who claim, for instance, that Japan got the US into WWII by bombing Pearl Harbor when it was the US who provoked the Japanese. It is this power elite that keeps Henry George’s work out of the hands of our economic students teaching them the ways of the Chicago School or neo-classical economics. And so the narrative continues, controlled by the power structure, the structure that put Barack Obama into the White House and he will in kind keep the narrative propaganda as the dominant story line.

Common heritage – you get it!!

I was a little messy with my last post, but you picked up the central point. Looks like you’ve got a good handle on this kind of economics.

Earth Rights Institute has been moving forward on the common heritage front – http://www.earthrights.net/docs/greentax.html.

I’ve given a couple of examples of what has happened when we shift from property improvement to land. The results are astounding and they’ve happened consistently.

Land is non-elastic in economic terms – you can’t move it. That fact ensures that a shift to land eliminates speculation and the kind of economic bubbles that have been inherent primarily with capitalism.

I was not clear on the pension mention above. What I meant was that we could eliminate all other pension plans (including social security) if we replaced our tax to a rent on natural resource usage. We could rebuild our infrastructure (move it to green) through such a tax. We could build mass transit just by capturing the wealth of the land around rail tracks and tansit centers. This is not theory.

Today, we see it in partial effect in Pennsylvania with their split tax, allowing municipalities to tax land more than property improvement. It is this approach which can be implemented to turnaround urban centers.

NYC is a case study of what happens in a large urban center during the Great Depression when applying land value tax. NYC is the only city in the country to actually grow during that time. Manhattan is once again using it to eliminate increased land speculation.

The larger picture would relieve much of the world of poverty. Resources would be more sustainably used.

Such a shift eliminates the concentration of wealth by making land (and essential incredient in creating human wealth) a common asset. This is the key. Neoclassical economists took land and subsumed it under capital. This has meant the massive concentration of wealth into the hands of a few and the mis-use of non-renewable resources.

Land value tax is a green tax and facilitates the reduction of sprawl while creating strong vibrant city centers where energy is most efficient used. It promotes building stock reuse rather than tear down approach of urban designers in the 1960s.

The USA has produced some great artists, but arguably its greatest thinker is Henry George. It is George’s ability to observe and synthesize that has made many consider him one of the top ten thinkers of all time.

Born in Scranton, PA, he influenced the Mayor of San Fransisco to use land to rebuild after the Great Earth Quake. (Tolstoy’s last book – Resurrection is dedicated to Henry George.) George’s personal story is truly incredible and yet, today, while most planners and economists know him, our universities still do not teach his works – start with Progress and Poverty an incredible work of both economic thinking and art.

thanks for the concrete examples of this taxation strategy you laid out for deadbeat.

I think that your comparison with the result of railroad land give-aways and the isolated wealth created by such favoritism substantiates the case for this functionally proven “alternative” system. Communal organization, which I know you support, is where the shift from regressive to progressive tax planning programs for ALL resources will have to occur; bottom-up activism.

The entire world economic structure of natural resource exploitation for monetary gain must soon become a thing of the past, when we’ll finally be able to look back and collectively ask ourselves, “What the %$#@ were we thinking all that time?” Resources should be the common heritage of the people, and the responsible management thereof will be community-dependent, eliminating privatization and the inherent absence of regulation or oversight. The solution is based on common sense and simple math, complexities lie in its implementation.

Thanks for your rationale, always welcome.

Best to you.

Your question can be answered in a number of ways, but I’ll stick for the moment with the practical as you requested.

Land (and this goes for all natural resources) is finite and its value is based on society’s investment in a particular area. So, where people settle in large numbers and invest in infrastructure, transit, sewage, schools, services such police and fire depts, etc. is the most valued land area. Urban centers are by this definition is where the most valued land resides. The further you move from urban centers the value of land decreases. So a single block in Manhattan is worth many times more than most of the land outside of the city.

The problem is our tax structures are regressive, and tax labor and capital with property tax. Most states do not allow municipalities to tax land over property improvements. If you reverse this you will begin to capture the wealth in the urban center. A simple reversal whereby taxation is levied higher on the land footprint over the building will eliminate slums, blight and vacancies (land speculation). The result is sufficient revenues to pay for community/city needs.

Here’s an example in history: a hundred years ago, San Fransisco suffered a sever eath quake that destroyed the entire city. They had nothing to tax to build the city to where it is today EXCEPT: land. They were able to build one of the world’s most efficently built cities (only Manhattan is more dense in the USA) with open space, etc.

This land tax is being used by Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapour and other countries and cities. Ireland and Britain have made use of it. It is a means by which citizens capture the common wealth – wealth we today (and in the past) have handed over to private ownership (note how the railroads were built and the land give-away that made incredible wealth for a few).

If we used land value tax in New Orleans today the story would be quite different and more like that of San Francisco. The reason is that when you tax land your revenue is indigenous as opposed to the feds sending in money which never gets in the right hands and simply disappears and leaves the area.

On a broader scale this shift to “land” provides the basis for all of our needs. Michael Hudson has written extensively on what should have happened in Russia after the Soviet collapse. Instead of using the “shock doctrine” that Jeffry Sachs prescribed, they simply kept the land (natural resources) public and tax their use they would avoided the concentration of wealth in a tiny hand of billionaires.

Harrisburg, PA was one of the countries most distressed cities 2 decades ago. They shifted from building improvements to land and completely reversed their course to one of the most outstanding municipalities in the country. Over 260 empirical studies bear this out. It works. Environmentalists support it. Farmers support it. It creates affordable housing – homes and rents. It is the most progressive form of taxation: Period.

We could do away with all pension plans and replace it with one tax – a tax on the use of natural resources. It would pay for all of the infrastructure needed and debt.

I suggest we work to eliminate privatized monopolies and assure access to the commons through a common heritage property tax. Instead of talking about “redistribution of wealth” here is a real means to assure that public wealth is captured and returned to all. Such a “tax” or “rent” would be on the use of natural resources. It would provide the economic means to assure the elimination of poverty and to begin the process of ending war and most conflicts.

Can you provide an explanation how your vision would be practically implemented. The reason I ask is that much of the need that is wanting in the U.S. (IMO) are vital services that may not require large land use. I’m thinking health & medical care, the arts, and education. Clearly housing is a problem but there seem to be a lot of unaffordable housing that is available for people to use.

If you can provide me with a more concrete example then perhaps I can better understand your perspective.

thanks.

There is a level of maturity that is a prerequisite to such cooperation.

I suggest we work to eliminate privatized monopolies and assure access to the commons through a common heritage property tax. Instead of talking about “redistribution of wealth” here is a real means to assure that public wealth is captured and returned to all. Such a “tax” or “rent” would be on the use of natural resources. It would provide the economic means to assure the elimination of poverty and to begin the process of ending war and most conflicts.

This shift away from taxation of labor and capital to land (all natural resources) would revolutionize our current preditory and privatized system of wealth concentration. It can be done locally, starting at the state level and then cities and towns.

This is based on classical economics – as opposed to the Milton Freidman neo-classical form that drives the US empire.

Until the day, and I hope it is very soon, that Americans can even begin to appreciate the maturation process, the importance of elders in the community, rebuild our communities…until that day, we have no right to even utter the word egalitarian.

We can begin that NOW. We don’t need to wait for the “revolution”.

to what extent bottom-up democracy is in place on the island remains to be seen in spite of August’s testament, the phenomena is too recent to make any sort of accurate and educated speculation.

Accounting for that, IF public participation is reduced to mere elections for politicians, as opposed to persistent participation in social policy, then the democracy of which you refer to will be no more effective or beneficial than in the US. As much as we’d like to see Cuba enjoy more abundance associated with better living conditions for the majority, this delicate transition of power from revolutionary legend to younger brother is still too fledgling. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, much of which may hinge on Obama’s initial moves and the rest of Latin America’s reaction to them.

Aside from that, to clarify I’m sure you meant to say post-Fidel Castro, as we’re still in the era of Castro and may be for another generation or more. A lot could take place between now and then.

Best to you.

It’s pretty clear that bottom up democracy is already well in place in Cuba [see the links I provided].

What is in question is whether existing Cuban democratic structures will survive the post-Castro era.

thanks for the link, I’ll take a looksy.

As for beans and rice, which I eat regularly, they are certainly a nutritious staple base, but not my argument. My question stems from a lack of variety in the Cuban diet, which has essentially been limited for the majority of Cubans. It’d be interesting to see if that’s what the Castros are limited to…but I already know the answer, they’re not.

A Colombian friend of mine and her Uruguayan husband had dinner at a banquet with Fidel in Havanna some 15 years ago, and to our surprise, they didn’t serve beans and rice despite its importance on the island.

As someone who admires Fidel’s struggle and consistent rebellion against the Empire, my criticism of the country and its leader is curtailed. Establishing that, why have so many Cubans escaped who continue to protest Fidel from places like Miami? As Max points out, supporters of Batista and opposition to Fidel, essentially waging their own propaganda from afar…flee the island to battle the island so to speak. It’s the same sort of opposition we have seen in Venezuela, with CIA and NGO orchestration. The proportion of Cubans who are anti-Fidel revolutionaries are insignificant compared to those who support him — what are we talking about 10% vs 90%, no contest. The other variable has been capitalism’s lure and the ‘illusion’ of the American Dream; those easily encouraged people who are attracted to wanting Nike on their feet as they enter McDonald’s.

Despite the two principle reasons for emigration from Cuba, the large majority of Cubans are unwaivering nationalists who support Fidel’s anti-empire revolution and their socialist society. Most Usonians can’t imagine people being driven by and attracted to things like free higher education and personal development in the arts; singing, dancing, playing music, drawing, sculpting, etc. I’m talking about the capitalist pigs who have to have their newest model of plasma tvs, or cell phones, or laptops, or what have you to offer in this empty society of stuff. People who are addicted to stuff can’t conceptualize other motives for people in a very different society like Cuba. Considering the dearth of accurate news circulating the U.S. of Amnesia about Cuba and it’s no wonder people are confused. Steve and Tree…

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, ¡Que vivan los pueblos libres y soberanos! (It was actually Fidel and Che who repeated it so often)

Best to all.

Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers http://tinyurl.com/7sej3p

Otherwise known as full spectrum dominance, ‘al-qaeda’ surrogates et al on speed.

So that you might realize what we’re dealing with.

Take a look at declared US policy and what it’s about.