[“A doctor ends up making about $40 a month.
On my worst days driving taxi, I bring in $60--In one day”]
Did you catch that?
This guy makes more in one day than a doctor makes in a month.
And he’s a taxi driver.
He’s actually trained as an engineer but engineers make even less than doctors.
“I like being a taxi driver, not an engineer”
Welcome to the Cuban economy.
Right after the socialist revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro’s government seized almost
all private businesses and land.
[You won’t have to worry about next year.
The state will do your planning from now on.]
Every restaurant, factory, hospital and home was property of the government.
The State set prices for everything and decided how much people got paid.
The private sector disappeared overnight.
[The men in this world desperately need: economic reform.]
You can see the result of this when you go looking for food in Havana.
When I showed up, I was pretty excited to see what street food was on offer.
But all i could find was this.
Everywhere I turned.
This is a typical scene in a Cuban eatery: too many employees in an empty establishment
with empty shelves, just waiting for food deliveries from the government, and putting
in their eight hours so they can go home.
They get paid the same whether they sell one plate of food, or fifty.
This model doesn’t work.
Cuba survived for many years with subsidies from the Soviet Union.
But since its collapse, the economy been getting worse every year.
This lady is showing me her government ration cards that she’s kept for decades.
Cubans use these monthly cards to go the storage house to get their monthly rations.
The government realized this in the 90s and has
started giving out private licenses, fueling a small but growing private sector.
I stumbled upon a private restaurant in Havana that was a totally different experience than
the public ones.
There was actually movement, and good service.
The owners had to actually sell good food if they wanted to stay in business.
Which brings me back to the Taxi driver and the doctor.
The reason a taxi drivers make so much more than doctors is because they have private
licenses.
Their salaries are not set by the state.
And they can charge tourists high prices.
I paid 25 dollars to get from the airport into Havana.
And inn that 30 minute drive, my driver made more than the average monthly salary of a
Cuban, which is $20.
One of the problems with this is that you have highly trained workers leaving their
trade to go do remedial work in the private sector.
This guy is an engineer, but he’s cooking in a private restaurant.
These guys are accountants by trade but make a killing driving around tourists on taxi
bikes.
This woman is a nurse, but she hasn’t been in a hospital in years.
This guy is an electrical engineer but opened up a barber shop in his house and makes ten
times more than he would in his field of study.
Imagine trying to live on the Cuban average of $20 per month.
When you ask them how they do it, they all have the same response.
“Everyone has to do something in addition to their official salary.”
Just beneath the surface in Cuba is a bustling informal market where Cuban’s make an additional
income on top of their official salary, just to survive.
We tend to associate black markets with dangerous activities.
But in Cuba, people sell illegal popsicles, or newspapers — not to get rich, but just
to survive.
But things are slowly changing.
Since Fidel’s brother Raul took over in 2008, the number of private licenses has increased
significantly every year.
And now 20% of the economy is now private.
Still, most Cubans are jaded by the decades they have had to use illegal creativity just
to survive.
“There is one party.
They control everything.
What change could there possibly be?”