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Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion
First time accepted submitter ltorvalds11 writes Cuba says its economy is suffering a "systematic worsening" due to a US embargo, the consequences of which Havana places at $1.1 trillion since Washington imposed the sanctions in 1960, taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against gold. "There is not, and there has not been in the world, such a terrorizing and vile violation of human rights of an entire people than the blockade that the US government has been leading against Cuba for 55 years," Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno told reporters. He also blamed the embargo for the difficulties in accessing internet on the island, saying that the United States creates an obstacle for companies providing broadband services in Cuba. Additionally, he said that the area is one of the "most sensitive" to the embargo, with economic losses estimated at $34.2 million. It is also the sector that has fallen "victim of all kinds of attacks" by the US, as violations of the Cuban radio or electronic space "promote destabilization" of Cuban society, the report notes. The damage to Cuban foreign trade between April 2013 and June 2014 amounted to $3.9 billion, the report said. Without the embargo, Cuba could have earned $205.8 million selling products such as rum and cigars to US consumers. Barack Obama last week signed the one-year extension of the embargo on Cuba, based on the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, created to restrict trade with countries hostile to the U.S..
Russian propaganda. These are the same idiots who claimed Russia wasn't ever invading Ukraine.
"There is not, and there has not been in the world, such a terrorizing and vile violation of human rights of an entire people than the blockade that the US government has been leading against Cuba for 55 years,"
Ha ha ha ha! Funny guy. He needs to read a history book - or even a current weekly magazine.
Abretardo Morono - pushing the limits of ignorant hyperbole!
The righteous communists have a need to trade with the capitalist imperialists? Won't the ghost of Stalin provide for all?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Works to something like $20 Billion a year. That's a credible figure. We do $650 billion with Canada in a year, and Cuba ain't that much smaller.
The problem with their argument is that whenever a US President tries to reduce tensions, they do something to ratchet them back up. For example, Obama was inaugurated in Jan of '09, announces easing the embargo by allowing families in the US to visit and send money more easily in April, and by December some poor schmuck (Alan Gross) is rotting in a Cuban jail for bringing computer equipment in for Jewish groups. It's true that if you're an evil dictatorship stopping your local people from doing that is not unreasonable, and it;s true our government paid for it, but it's also true that you could easily stop him seizing his computers and deporting his ass. Now if Obama ever does anything nice for Cuba (such as sticking his neck out on ending the embargo) people supporting the embargo strongly have a trump card: why would we trade with a country that is holding one of our guys in prison for the crime of helping people access the internet?
It would cost them literally nothing to let this guy go, but they insist on keeping him in prison where he can only prevent them from accessing that $20 billion a year export market.
Which means most independent observers have long concluded the Castros like the embargo, because it allows them to claim everything that is wrong with the country is Evil Foreign Gringo's fault. Which justifies things like arresting guys for bringing in computer equipment.
... a fucked up country full of paranoid war hawks and religious whack-jobs, that's about what you'd expect from america.
Just like Russia, the main difference is that the Americans are allowed to say it out loud about their own politicians.
The sins of the father should not be carried by the son. I would continue the embargo for 7 more years and then force Cuba to allow US companies to open up shop there.
Why 7 more?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
And there we have a winner: why a lot of people think you guys are dicks. Sociopathic dicks with the world's largest army, but still dicks.
Why has no one notices the submitter's username yet?
Perhaps because nobody thought that someone calling "them"self "L Torvalds 2" is any more significant than someone calling "them"self "King Adolf Godwin the Sixth"?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I'm sure the United States would be more willing to consider ending the embargo if Alan Gross was freed from prison.
`more willing' in this case would mean saying 'No, no, no way' to ending the embargo, rather than 'No, no, no, no way'.
In other words, it is the political reality in the US that makes this impossible, not the imprisonment of a single guy.
What's Guantanamo for, again?
Mainly foreigners who want to say it with guns and bombs. Feel free to ask if there is anything else you need to know.
The US Army is hardly the world's largest. Get a grip.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The whole embargo smacks of "well, we've always done it this way" at this point. I don't really see any point to the embargo. It didn't work 40 years ago; it's not working today (for whatever purpose the government thinks it's doing). Time to use more carrots and less sticks, imho.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Obviously the embargo is nothing to do with the less than perfect human rights in Cuba and everything to do with the large and very vocal Cuban community in the south that hate Cuba with a passion. (Castro et. al. are not angels, but they were never as nasty as Pinochet etc.) The bay of pigs was embarrassing but long before the far more embarrassing Vietnam war, yet Vietnamese are now friends.
But what is in it for the Democrats? The US Cubans hate the democrats anyway and will never vote for them. So why would Obama do such an obviously wrong thing with this endless embargo? Is it just habit?
If you really want to mess up Cuba - drop the embargo and flood them with goods.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
We're sorry but Cuban political prisoners were not available for comment. Electrical engineers had attempted to increase internet access in Cuba but fled to the freedom of the United States when they were told censorship doesn't allow true internet with scary freedom of speech. http://youtu.be/v5zmNRGAUQY
I was in Cuba earlier this year. They seem to be doing OK for themselves.
Sure, there are towns outside of Havana and Trinidad where there isn't a lot to do, but I didn't see any real evidence of extreme poverty.
As far as I could see, the only thing the embargo is doing is preventing (most) Americans from visiting the place.
Summation 2
... a fucked up country full of paranoid war hawks and religious whack-jobs, that's about what you'd expect from america.
Happy September 11th. If I wished to say those things about the United States I'd even be able to do so as a citizen. If you're an American then congratulations, you're in one of the only countries that you can do that. If you're not American I don't intend to stifle your freedom of speech, I just dare you to say that about you're own country.
"The US Army is hardly the world's largest".
Not since Vietnam, when the drug addiction and officer-fragging led to a decision never to field a conscript army again. Nowadays the US Army consists mainly of those whose principles and patriotism are so lofty that they are blind to the harm their efforts can cause, and the majority who can't earn enough to eat any other way.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Castro might not be able to repay Cuba for this economic loss. Maybe those missiles were a bad idea.
I wonder what the value of American-owned assets nationalized by Castro would be worth today had they never been nationalized. My guess is that it has to be at least Cuba's "cost" or worse.
It'd also be interesting to know the value of the lost productivity imposed by Cuba's communist economics.
The US Army is hardly the world's largest. Get a grip.
In terms of headcount, the US has the 3rd largest military, behind China and India. (North Korea is 4th) The US military employs 70% more people than the Russian military.
In terms of spending, the US has no close competition. The US spends 3.5 times as much as the next largest spender (China), and accounts, by itself, for more than a third of global military spending.
Cuba is a complex nation with both good and bad points and we should not adopt just the American view towards Cuba. First the revolution in Cuba went astray and many good people were killed or had their lives ruined. There is also no doubt that Cuba backed a hostile Soviet Union during the cold war. There is also no doubt that prior to Castro American organized crime ran rampant in Cuba and the public in Cuba was being raped by corruption. Some Cubans did better after the communist gained power just as some lost their lives, property or freedom. Meanwhile we all act like blissful idiots by avoiding the real issues. Island nations often lack enough natural resources to provide a decent life for their populations. The type of government does very little to change that. For example if Haiti were to go communist today they would still be a very poor nation. If Cuba adopted the government and laws of Sweden or Switzerland or the US Cuba would still be a suffering nation. Natural resources shrink when used. Every year Cuba has less natural resources. With strict birth control and population control such as allowing no immigration at all Cuba could shrink its population and there would be more natural resources per person which can cause more wealth per person. Civil unrest and revolution are all expressions of over population which we tend to see as poverty. Picture it this way. We give each form of government a resting place in its own paper bag. We place each paper bag in a coffin full of fish guts and seal the coffin. We come back after a month and each form of government will have the same wretched stink. The form of the government does not control the prosperity of a nation. If we try to judge nations by their ability to survive we would be talking about strong monarchies in Egypt or China where concepts of fairness simply were not in play and a monarch with crushing powers determined every little thing.
Mainly foreigners who are accused of wanting to say it with guns and bombs, but there's no actual evidence and no judicial process or civilian oversight.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Well the US acted in 1960 to place the embargo, we're still waiting for them to actually think it through. It's funny that Cuba actually has a better medical system then the US, and it's state funded, probably what the embargo was about in the first place.
>Happy September 11th. If I wished to say those things about the United States I'd even be able to do so as a citizen. If you're an American then congratulations, you're in one of the only countries that you can do that. If you're not American I don't intend to stifle your freedom of speech, I just dare you to say that about you're own country.
My country has a government filled with extreme levels of corruption, the police is so corrupt as to be almost entirely ineffective - but when they do actually do anything it generally ends in unarmed poor (usually black) people being shot for daring to complain about it. the military is really only useful as an excuse for corrupt arms-deal contracts (mostly to buy equipment nobody is ever trained to actually be able to use), the president couldn't remove his head from his arse without major surgery, the opposition parties are no less corrupt and completely ineffective which has turned our once lofty intellectual political discourse into a farce of clowns throwing manure at each other.
Basically - we're exactly like America, only with a lot more poor people. Oh - and I have MORE civil liberties than YOU do.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The people they didn't murder the Cuban revolutionaries stripped of all property and they became paupers overnight. They'd have to ignore their own actions if they want to claim there has never been a more vile violation of human rights. That said the U.S. is under absolutely NO obligation to trade with Cuba. Trade with the USA as you make them like an enemy is NOT a right. Cuba painted itself as the enemy and sided with a regime that pointed thousands of nuclear wardheads at the USA, complaining about a lack of trade as if you had rights to trade is abject nonsense..
Are you kidding? Being able to criticise the government is the norm, not the exception. Most countries welcome it. Do you really know that little about the world? You do realise it's poorly-though-out posts like yours which bolster the stereotype of the globally-ignorant American, right? You tried to turn the tables on an attack on "your" country, and ended up perpetuating a negative stereotype about it instead. Good jerb!
South Africa? Glad to see someone not AC. You never mentioned how you have more freedom but I'm still inclined to believe you.
The US has tried to lift the embargo several times. Every time Cuba does something to get it maintained. There was famiously a plane hijacking one of the times we talked about lifting it.
Beyond that, the embargo does not stretch to the whole planet. They can trade with Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China, etc. Just not the US. I think they can trade with any country and europe and probably canada. So... whatever Cuba.
Like most failed states, they're just blaming their incompetence on someone else.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's not a very difficult calculation - our constitution has all the rights yours has - and a few more you don't :D
And good job guessing the country right :D
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Gross was a saboteur, trying to overthrow the Cuban government. His wife finally admitted as much, as I wrote above.
He was getting money under the Helms-Burton Act. The purpose of the Helms-Burton act was to overthrow the Cuban government. They were paying him to try the unworkable idea of setting up an alternate Internet, to help the Cuban Jews overthrow the Castro government. The Cuban Jews actually got along very well with Raul Castro.
The Cubans want to exchange Gross for 3 Cuban intelligence agents who are in prison right now. They came to the U.S. as undercover agents to monitor the Miami Cubans who were committing acts of terrorism against Cuba, such as blowing up a Cuban plane, and bombing tourist spots.
The U.S. has refused the exchange. The anti-Cuban hard-liners would rather leave Gross in prison than improve relations.
Reading this make me realize that you are talking about my country. Right? Dominican Republic, this is the exact description for this piece of crap, so sad.
You do realise it's poorly-though-out posts like yours
Ironic?
I'm asking this out of ignorance. What else was included in your constitution in regards to freedom? Remember though that our constitution is old enough to drink in the United States while yours is kinda not. Our Constitution's great great grandkids can drink in the U.S. while your constitition kind can't.
Of course your 'allowed to' say them, how else will they build up a big database of who to target in the future?
Ostensibly, that was the exact thinking when the US forged on-going relations with China. It worked, sorta. At least they're coupled to codependency with America at the economic level. It's still to early to tell if this was a good idea or not in the long run.
Life is not for the lazy.
Stopped reading when they used the terms embargo and blockade interchangeably.
Still, we should knock it off. We have normal international relations with countries that have much greater sins in their past, or even present.
No, its not ironic. One misplaced hyphen does not invalidate his point.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I beg to disagree, but here in Argentina we have much more freedom than you guys up North. We can say whatever we want against those in power, travel freely, and as far as I can tell the only people spying on us ARE FROM USA... Happy Fascism Consolidation Day for all the folks up there!
And here we were taught by Under-development theorists (Marxists) that poverty was caused by exploitation by the capitalist countries (Core-Periphery) and that the solution was to have underdeveloped countries have less trade with capitalist countries. All sorts of regimes copied that (high import tarrifs, refusing outside companies from going in,etc...). Free market economists said that would create more poverty. Marxist economists and theorists said "bullsh1t." So. According to Marxist theorists and economists from the 1950s to the 1990s (out of grad school now - things may have changed) the Cuban embargo should have helped Cuba by saving them from capitalist exploitation.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You really think that America is one of the only countries where you can say something like that?
Well our constitution was written much later - with a lot of inspiration from the US - which is why our bill of rights and the US one is very similar.
However there is also one or two items from more recent sources (for starters the entire International Convention on Human Rights).
There is also a few liberties we've taken from things like the German constitution - which deal with the realities of countries that had experienced gross human rights abuses - such as a right to dignity.
The right to dignity for example has several clauses - such as a positive obligation placed on the government to ensure there is quality housing for all citizens and a requirement that evictions can only be done with a court order. Another impact is that it informs the right not to be discriminated against - here a business cannot deny service to anybody on discriminatory grounds. Recently a wedding venue wanted to refuse a gay couple the right to marry there on religious grounds and lost their case - the constitutional right not to be discriminated against on sexual orientation means that if you operate a business you MUST serve ALL sexual orientations. There's no obligation to approve of gay marriage, but you cannot as a business discriminate against it (a church could refuse to host a service, but a church is not a business).
Not everybody thinks these are freedoms, some people would say the above example reduces the business owner's freedom for example - and it's true that this is a trade-off but the right not to be discriminated against protects freedoms (such as freedom of association and movement) for many, many people - if a small minority has a very slight decrease in freedom (while making money out of the people they aren't allowed to mistreat) then this is a worthwhile trade-off in my mind.
In some regards the fact that our constitution is only 20 years old has been advantageous - it means that we have all the rights the US has - most of which were not in their original constitution (Everything with "amendment" in it) right in the basic document, and we still have the option of future amendments if we need them.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The moral of the story is if you own some crappy little island right next to the US and you have crap for local resources, don't ally with some broke ass country like Russia.
The full lifting of the embargo and establishment of full diplomatic relations with Cuba.
It's been close to a generation and the damage being done is pretty obvious.
I think Cuba is also suffering a brain drain. Those who could get out after Baptista and the Bay of Pigs did. What was left was the rabble. But they survived, even under our stupidity.
And up until the 1950's Cuba was a veritable tropical playground.
Honestly, it's time to give up this embargo. It's antiquated, outmoded, and even a little bit hypocritical. We don't have an embargo with China and China is a communist nation. What could it hurt to drop the embargo?
So funny and so true. The economic flood would destroy their native markets, and garner quite a bit for US based companies.
I chatted with a 50 yr old 'pool boy' in Veradero. I asked him his occupation. He said: "Economist". He was earning 300 times as much cleaning hotel pools in the special tourist area than he would have in his profession.
In Trinidad, Cuba, there are extremely well-trained doctors and nurses at clinics... except that there is a real dearth of medicine available.
Cubans are crushed by their so-called government. It is heinous and loathsome.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Churchill
*** Don't be dull.***
Isn't imposing a large cost on the other country the whole point of an embargo? What's the complaint here? I mean, Cuba obviously doesn't like it, but it's sort of like Russia claiming that the sanctions for invading Ukraine are costing it money, or Al Qaeda claiming that US military intervention is killing terrorists. That's the intent.
Clearly $1.1 trillion isn't enough considering it hasn't worked.
(Also, does this figure count Russian aid during the Cold War against the loss from not trading with Americans?)
Yes, because in the U.S. you'd never have for-profit prisons, civil forfeiture, or even outright cops stealing cash under the pretence of fighting crime.
The U.S. certainly wouldn't have issues with police beating minorities or killing them, leading to riots. They wouldn't have a growing number of cases of false imprisonment, or police militarization
And I wonder what kind of counter-claim of damages the USA can pretend they too suffered in the loss of trade. Probably just about the same amount in total.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Let's not forget that the best estimates for the death of communist regimes killing their own people is right around 100 million people. Both The Black Book of Communism and R.J. Rummel's Death by Government come up with roughly the same number of people killed.
Communism is incompatible with both human rights and a healthy economy, and never has, never can, and never will meet the needs of its own people or offer better lives than those under capitalism.
Embargoes have nothing to do with it...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Michael Totten did, and he found a police state overseeing wrenching poverty, complete with shortages for essentials and goods of retched quality.
In short: Communism.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If Cuba had oil . . . the embargo would be over really fast.
Ask the Iranians who continue to be under tight US sanctions. Oil hasn't helped them escape thirty years of US economic embargo.
As foreign policy goes, the US' policy on Cuba is probably one of the single most stupid and short-sighted foreign policies there is.
All politics is domestic, and Cuba is the same. As long as there is a very vocal community of Cuban expats that have an axe to grind with the Castro-created regime, the United States will not be lifting sanctions. I think as that generation gets older and fades away, we'll see an easing, but while they're still alive and politically active, change will not happen. Cubans Americans after all make up a large and politically active faction in a crucial swing state (Florida).
I mean, most of the first wave that left Cuba with the Revolution were supporters of the Battista dictatorship, and the Mafia (who ran Havana). Come on, tell me that's not the case, and I'll call you either ignorant, or a liar.
But the US used to support *any* tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur, as long as they loudly and vocally claimed to be anti=Communist, never mind what they did to their own people. We "engaged" with China... what reason is there for the embargo?
mark
I'm sure Cuba would be more willing to consider releasing Alan Gross from prison if the Cuban 5 were freed from prison. It doesn't help relations when you imprison counter-terrorism operatives for being spies. Their only crime was preventing more bombings of innocents in Havana.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Much of what you're saying seems based on a (all to common) fundamental misunderstanding of rights and the constitution. In the US, our rights are not defined there. The constitution exists to document the ways in which the government's power (to interfere with our rights) is limited. It does also lay out a limited range of things the government must do (defense, that sort of thing) and the structure of the branches of government ... but the point of the charter isn't to set up a laundry list of our rights. It's to remind everyone that rights (say, to assemble or speak, etc) are "natural," and that given the tendency of people in power to abuse things, we have a chartering document that points out the limits on the government's power - and it expressly mentions some hot-button areas that the document's authors knew would come up. Like speech, assembly, self defense, and the like.
You don't have "more rights" because more of them are listed. Nobody has a "right" to housing in the same way they have a right to freedom of speech. You're confusing government-run entitlement programs, paid for with taxes taken from one person and given to another, with "rights." They are not the same thing. A "right to dignity" as it relates to the government should only be mentioned in the sense that such a clause would prevent the government from actively doing something that removes someone's "dignity" (an impossibly elastic word that is more or less chosen for its inability to be commonly understood or defined).
A rational, constitutional take on "dignity" (vis a vis homelessness, for example, since you mention it), would be that the government cannot stop you from being charitable and helping somebody else into a home if you see fit. The only way the government can be in the dignity-through-housing-paid-for-by-someone-else business is to reduce someone else's dignity by making them spend part of their day as a slave working to prop up the "dignity" (read as: having stuff) of another guy. When you can wave the magic "dignity" wand and use it to remove something from one person and give it to another, that cries out for a very precise definition of dignity.
How many square meters of kitchen space is required in order to be dignified? If I have to spend some of the 12+ hours I'll spend working today in order to make a deposit in someone else's dignity fund, I'm left less able to afford my own kitchen than I otherwise would be. What if I feel undignified in an 800 square foot apartment, but would feel like I would finally have my dignity in a 1000 square foot space? Should I have the right to make you, with the government ready to back me up by seizure and force and imprisonment of you if you're not cooperative, give me the difference in rent every month? Talking about such things in terms of "rights" is completely misguided.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Was RT anchor Abby Martin's condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine "propaganda"? http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/... RT is state-funded, but its anchors are not controlled by any means. There are US government-paid trolls all over this thread.
He didn't have a pension. So he's not worried. The eyes of the expropriators will never land on his stuff. Or so he thinks.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
>You're confusing government-run entitlement programs, paid for with taxes taken from one person and given to another, with "rights." They are not the same thing.
That's a very American philosophical position - it's not a fact. Here - these things are constitutionally guaranteed rights.
I also did NOT make the mistake you made, our system is actually not that different from yours - but ON TOP of what we restrict the government from doing we
1) Give them a lot more they are REQUIRED to do
2) Have OTHER things they are NOT allowed to do.
For example - we got gay marriage legalized years ago - because the constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. The constitutional court found that government not allowing it was discrimination and with a single court case the matter was settled for good.
Having a constitutional right NOT to be discriminated against on any of a long list of grounds is one of our best features. You add ammendments one by one for different types of discrimination you encounter - we gave everybody the right not to be discriminated against as a core factor of our constitution right from the start.
And seriously - America is not the greatest country on earth - in many ways it's the worst. In some others it's excellent - but the ONLY people who think it's better than any others are Americans who swallowed the kool aid. Nobody else will EVER be convinced because when your politics fuck up it hurts you a little and everybody else a LOT.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The drug war has failed. Street prices for cocaine are already the lowest sense it was made illegal.
If you want cocaine, you can find it for cheap vs. the 1980s. Less than half the price, without inflation. Closer to 25% with.
Why would you want to? Shitty drug, terrible hangover.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
(a church could refuse to host a service, but a church is not a business).
So I guess you're not that far ahead of us if you still haven't seen through the thinly veiled "not a business" argument. Lekker.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Lord knows, that's one organization that knows the value of inflation.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
One problem with your reasoning. Polish leaders very heartily embraced the West and NATO membership. In Cuba, on the other hand, the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power despite the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of theirr USSR sugar-daddy. If Cuba's economy had gotten a boost from the USA, the Castros would have used the additional revenue to further solidify their grip on power. I don't see a path to obtaining a Poland-like outcome, and you sure haven't pointed out such a path.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Actually the U.S. hasn't even had much luck getting the Cuban gov't to allow the Cuban people to hear uncensored *radio.*
What a crazy series of claims, overall. Would Cuba's overlords like a high-speed, uncensored internet link from Miami? Doesn't seem hard ...
Of course, the crazy runs deep and is bilateral: the U.S. has a crazy embargo, and has for decades.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Perhaps you shouldn't have picked Russia's side in the cold war?
What did you think was going to happen when you let the Russians deploy ballistic missiles?
Well that's a different issue but officially here churches are considered non profit organisations though this is not automatic. They have to apply like any charity and comply with relevant regulations - including that they have to actually spend at least a certain percentage of their income on endeavors with no return.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
relevant regulations - including that they have to actually spend at least a certain percentage of their income on endeavors with no return.
Well, there's no return in buying Cadillacs for the clergy, right? :P
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
...we give China most favored nation status.
WTF?
So just to be clear, you're saying that some people in your country have the right to force other people in your country give them stuff.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
No. You're reading with Republican blinkers on. The housing thing is an entitlement not a right. What I said was that if you qualify for the entitlement the dignity right prevents government from giving you a new cardboard box and calling it "housing assistance".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
How would more goods in the stores that no one (aside from drug dealers and jineteras) can afford to buy help anything? Or are we talking about giving the stuff away?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Well, your assumption that they would be grossly inflated is 100% incorrect, these are surplus goods that are sold at 15% of the price that they would go for in their domestic markets because for them to reach the foreign markets they are marked down as excess and further subsidized by the government through various import tax schemes.
The housing thing is an entitlement not a right. What I said was that if you qualify for the entitlement the dignity right prevents government from giving you a new cardboard box and calling it "housing assistance".
OK, so indeed, if you pass a certain test, you have the power to make the government take something from other people, and give it to you. And your constitution guarantees that only can that happen, but it has to happen with a certain amount of style. Not enough style, and it's undignified, right? So: who decides how many square feet of entitlement home is constitutionally dignified? How does the constitution lay out the definition of dignified where the rubber meets the road and you have to decide how much of someone else's work day should be spent building a kitchen for somebody else? Specifically.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's a publicly available document - if you seriously want to know, go read it.
There is quite a lot of restrictions on accessing this - generally it's limited to people who genuinely could never do so for themselves, and I've yet to encounter any South African (even libertarians) who have an issue with the housing program (though the libertarians complain that the recipients should get full ownership with title).
The much more important aspect is not that, it's rules like making evictions require a court order - so that power imbalances between rich and poor can be somewhat mitigated by judicial oversight into processes like that.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
So your constitution doesn't exactly spell out what dignity exactly is, or what "quality" actually means in constitutionally mandated "quality housing for all citizens" - but it's not an entitlement, it's actually a "right" defined in the constitution, right? You said it's a clause there. Which is it? Does the constitution get dirty in describing specific wealth transfer entitlement program details, or not?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.