Cuba’s communist leaders are laying off more than 500,000 workers from their bloated government payroll and telling them to get jobs in the private sector. Just one flaw in the planning: There is no private sector -- at least, not much of one. The Castro brothers have spent the past 50 years systematically eliminating it...There are 5.1 million government employees, about 1 million too many, estimates President Raul Castro. He proposes first laying off those who frequently don’t show up for work and don’t do much when they do. This doesn’t sound like the most promising human capital to build a private sector basically from scratch.
But, he told the National Assembly, “Now we have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working.” Since the average monthly wage is $20, you’re barely living if you do work.
These layoffs are to be completed by next March. By then, according to a Communist Party document obtained by the Associated Press, the workers put out on the street will have found raising rabbits, painting buildings, making bricks, collecting garbage, piloting ferries, driving taxis, repairing cars, cutting hair and making candy and dried fruit...
Read the full editorial in the Puerto Rico Daily Sun.
