fatvegan

We watched a nifty documentary on Cuba last night. Emily thought it would be really depressing and sad. But it was totally the opposite. SBS didn't manage to find any of the people who were really opposed to the government. It was mostly just about people who loved their country but were finding it tough going. No one seriously discussed leaving, although one of the Cuban intellectuals said he thought there were lots that wanted to leave.

Watching it has reinspired me to trot out into the world and be an economist. I've developed a pattern of being invigorated by badly shot documentaries on Latin America in the 80s and 90s.

It got me thinking and downloading Excel spreadsheets again. I was curious to know, of all those Latin American countries with a GDP higher than Cuba, how many actually give the money to their poor and middle class. So I found some data on income deciles across the world, and worked out the GDP per capita for everyone but the 30% wealthiest. Which is a far more interesting statistic than the normal GDP per capita. Invariably, the wealthiest people in a country are OK. GDP per capita is supposed to be a blunt measure of "wellbeing". One person with a lot of money and one person with no money doesn't really give you an average wellbeing of "pretty good". The maths does give you that though. The people economists are interested in are the bottom 50% or the bottom 90%. But, in general, not the bottom 100%. So I set about making my own measure of GDP per unrich capita.

The results were very interesting. I'll clean them up some time and post them. But basically, Cuban GDP per capita (for the poorest 100%) is between $3500 and $6000 (US) depending who you ask. If you assume that this is pretty evenly distributed (which may not be reasonable, because there isn't information on it), but if you did then Cuba beats every non-OECD country in the world. And it beats them all by a hefty margin. The only country that comes close is Slovenia with a figure of $2084. So if you're in the bottom 70% of the world (which a good majority are), and you have to pick a non-OECD country to live in, then Cuba would be a pretty good place. And that's purely on wealth terms. I haven't attempted to factor in their excellent rum or cigars. Or their catchy musical numbers.

So to all the poor out there, if you fancy a pay rise and want good schools for you kids and like good rum, you know where to go. Or alternatively, you know which socialist revolution to emulate should you wish to have one of those. Although I have to say, I think the Nicaraguans did a far better job of their revolution than Cuba has. Which may partly explain why America was so keen to stomp on it.