Especially for you, Councillor Piper, with my, er, compliments!

Councillor Piper is one of those socialists with a soft sympathy for murderous dictatorships, provided, of course, that they are the right, or should I say, Left, sort of murderous dictatorships.  For example, he is rather fond of holidays in Cuba where he stays at nice hotels situated carefully up-wind of the state prison where-in languish various 'traitors to the working class' in need of urgent re-education, some of whom, in their despair and anger, succeed in starving themselves to death.  Still, he speaks highly of the chilled daiquiris!

Thus, I was intrigued by this graph produced over at Cafe Hayek which compares the life expectancy against the per capita income of Portugal and Cuba from 1959 to 2009:

Starting in 1959, Portugal and Cuba have about the same life expectancy but Cuba about 25% more prosperous than Portugal. After 50 years of communism, life expectancy has gone up dramatically (about 25%) in both countries. But now Portugal is more than twice as prosperous as Cuba.

Defenders of Cuba like to point out that they have a great education system and a great health system. Even if this is true, this graph reminds us that in a poor country being really good at one thing means being really bad at other things.

So when Councillor Piper and his ilk sing the praises of Fidel's revolution and claim, against all historical evidence, that 'socialism works', just send them a copy of this graph because, as they say at Cafe Hayek, one picture is worth a thousand words.  I should add in fairness that Bob Piper is not a bad chap, just a very short-sighted one, suffering as he does from rose-tinted, mono-occular vision!  But there again, "there's none so blind as them wot don't want to see!"

 

Comments

[dearieme]

"After 50 years of communism.." could as well be written "After 50 years of medical progress in the outside world, which even communist countries can copy....".

Anyway, I always wonder how one can get accurate and honest statistics from a regime which would happily shoot anyone dedicated to honesty and accuracy?

[Dom]

If you go to the original site, take a look at North and South Korea. Of course, there is no difference between them until the war, then watch what happens.

You can even compare China with Taiwan. China goes all Cuba-like, and then plays catch up when the free-market is introduced.

For some reason, I can't seperate East and West Germany.

I have to wonder why there is still an argument about the relative virtues of free and non-free economies. But then, I also wonder why people voted for Obama.

[dearieme]

The last one's easy. The alternative.

[David Duff]

I find myself wondering about almost every aspect of contemporary life!

[Umbongo]

But you see, DD, if it weren't for the sanctions imposed by the Great Satan to the north of Cuba the GDP of Cuba would be rivalling France, everyone there would be living to 100 and queues a mile long would be forming outside Cuba's embassies world-wide demanding immigration visas.