Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Those Cuban immigrants were illeriterate and poor! Read what you just posted! Yes, they were more intelligent, because they realized that communism was stupid before finding out the hard way. That's all they had going for them.
Oh, so not knowing how to speak and write English makes you illiterate, huh? I guess 80% of the world is illiterate
Well, as a Puerto-Rican born citizen I am quite offended. Here's another quote:
"B.__ Exile begins._ An estimated 800,000 people emigrate from Cuba to the U.S. between 1959 and 1980._ The first wave of Golden Exiles included about 215,000 of the social, political, and economic elites during the Batista regime._ They arrived in the U.S. without money or property; but they brought with them the skills, training, and knowledge that had served Cuban society, however exploitative."
Yes, of course the Cubans didn't have jobs and housing when they arrived. I mean, they didn't exactly do a round of job interviews before leaving Cuba - they were fleeing for their lives, for goodness' sakes! But that does not change the fact that they were, as the quote above says : "215,000 of the social, political, and economic elites".
And the same holds true for Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong - it was the educated elite from China that populated those areas. What is so freakin' hard to understand about this? Look, if the top scientists and engineers from Russia moved to the U.S., they'd do very well. The fact is that although the level of wealth varies widely across the globe, the economic elite of any country will do well almost anywhere they go. Why? A host of reasons - better education, more self-confidence, greater ability to manage money and power. But it is an almost irrefutable fact.
And back to China, from the CIA World Factbook:
"In late 1978 the Chinese leadership began moving the economy from a sluggish Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented system. Whereas the system operates within a political framework of strict Communist control, the economic influence of non-state organizations and individual citizens has been steadily increasing. The authorities have switched to a system of household and village responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprise in services and light manufacturing, and opened the economy to increased foreign trade and investment. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978. In 2001, with its 1.27 billion people but a GDP of just $4,300 per capita, China stood as the second largest economy in the world after the US (measured on a purchasing power parity basis)."
China's growth is due to the market reforms it has undertaken, not because it's riding the backs of prison labor as you seem to imply. C'mon, get real. You can talk all you want about summary executions and prison labor, that's NOT the reason for China's economic growth. Do you really think it's prisoners working in Intel's chip factories? Or building consumer electronics? Please, get real. If prison labor is used, it's for unskilled labor, and a quite small factor in the economy.
And it's so freakin' hypocritical to single out China. The only reason we do is because we now see them as a rival. Do you ever think twice about where the products you buy come from? How is anybody in China worse off than someone working on a plantation in the dictatorships of Honduras or Guatemala? Are you going to boycott all products that aren't produced by democratic countries? Then prepare to pay a LOT more for a MUCH smaller product selection.