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[On my worst days, I make $60.]
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[A doctor makes about $40 per month.]
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Did you catch that? This guy makes more in one day than a doctor makes in a month.
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And he's a taxi driver.
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Well, he's actually a trained engineer, but engineers make even less than doctors.
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[So I like being a taxi driver. Not an engineer]
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Welcome to the Cuban economy.
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Right after the socialist revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro's government seized almost all private businesses and land.
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You won't have to worry about next year. The state will do your planning from now on!
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Every restaurant, factory, hospital and home was property of the government.
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The State set prices for everything and decided how much people got paid.
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The private sector disappeared overnight.
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The world these men live in desperately needs economic reforms.
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You can see the result of this if you go looking for food in Havana today.
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When I showed up, I was pretty excited to see what street food was on offer.
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But all I could find was this. Just this. Ham sandwiches. Everywhere.
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Here is a typical scene in a Cuban eatery: too many employees in an empty establishment with empty shelves.
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They're just waiting for food deliveries from the government, and putting in their eight hours so they can go home.
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They get paid the same whether they sell one plate of food, or fifty.
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This model just doesn't work.
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Cuba survived for many years with subsidies from the Soviet Union.
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[Long live communism!]
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But since its collapse, the economy‘s been getting worse every year.
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This lady is showing me her government ration cards that she's kept for decades.
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Cubans use these cards to go to the storage houses to get their monthly rations.
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[Today, we get less cooking oil, less grains, less sugar. We don't even get soap or detergent anymore. Everyday we get less and less.]
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[Have they improved in any aspect at all?]
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The government realized this was becoming a problem in the 90s, and started giving out private licenses, fueling a small but growing private sector.
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I stumbled upon a private restaurant in Havana, and it was a totally different experience than the public ones.
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There was actually movement, and good service.
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The owners had to sell good food if they wanted to stay in business.
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Which brings me back to the taxi driver and the doctor.
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The reason why taxi drivers make so much more than doctors is because they have private licenses.
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Their salaries are not set by the state, and they can charge tourists high prices.
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I paid $25 to get from the airport into Havana.
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And in that 30 minutes, this driver made more than the average monthly salary of a Cuban, which is $20.
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[I put in eight hours as a licensed nurse, and daily, I don't even bring in $2.]
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One of the problems with this is that you get highly trained workers leaving their trade to go do mediocre work in the private sector.
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This guy is an engineer, but he's cooking in a private restaurant.
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These guys are accountants by trade, but are making a killing driving around tourists on taxi bikes.
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This woman is a nurse, but she hasn't worked in a hospital in years.
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This guy is an electrical engineer, but he opened up a barber shop in his house and makes ten times more than he would in his field of study.
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Imagine trying to live on the Cuban average salary of $20 per month.
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When you ask them how they do it, they all have the same response.
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[We all have to do something on top of our official job.]
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[If you don't, you won't eat.]
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Just beneath the surface in Cuba is a bustling informal market where Cubans make an additional income on top of their official salary, just to survive.
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[We survive thanks to this dark market—this underground market.]
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[When I leave my house and cross the street to buy a newspaper, I'm committing the first crime of the day.]
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[Because that old man is selling me the paper illegally.]
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[The official vendor keeps the papers and sells them to the old man.]
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We tend to associate black markets with dangerous activities.
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But in Cuba, people sell illegal popsicles, or newspapers—not to get rich, but just to survive.
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But things are slowly changing.
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Since Fidel's brother Raul took over in 2008, the number of private licenses has increased significantly every year, and 20% of the economy is now private.
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But still, most Cubans are jaded by the decades they have had to use illegal creativity just to survive.
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[We live in a country with only one party.]
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[What could possibly happen? Could there really be change?]