I mean the one taking place Nov 11, when private property is again allowed. The trick is of course what they mean by allowing private property. Human rights are superior to governments, so when a government "allows" something we have anyway, I get nervous.
From the article....
Nov 3, 12:09 PM EDT
Cuba legalizes sale, purchase of private property
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.
***Go, Raul!***
The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday's Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government's Official Gazette.
***Granma?***
The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large real estate holdings. It requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and says the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.
***Ooooops... too much govt, exploitation is best checked by free markets.***
Sales will also be subject to an 8 percent tax on the assessed value of the property, paid equally by buyer and seller. In the case where Cubans exchange homes of equal value in a barter agreement, each side will pay 4 percent of the value of their home.
***What do they need tax money for?***
"This is a very big step forward. With this action the state is granting property rights that didn't exist before," said Philip J. Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. "If you think about it from the point of view of a Cuban family, it converts their house from a place to live into a source of wealth or a source of collateral. It's an asset that can now be made liquid."
***Arrrrgggghhh... the need tax money to defend themselves from crazy ideas from USA... property rights exist before a states does, so his comment is very confused... Considering a home as a source of collateral is to set oneself up for enslavement. If that is effected, then all this revolution will do is put Cubans enslaved to banks.***
"This is going to help me because I have some money and now I will be able to buy a better house," said Oscar Palacios Delgado, a 68-year-old office maintenance worker, adding he hoped the government would enact other changes to make it easier for Cubans to find building materials for home repairs. "This law will benefit many Cubans."
***Costco, and probably Home Depot, wll load a container of building materials and export it for you. There is probably a business.... ooops, USA citizens are not allowed to trade with Cuba. Leave that business to Mexicans. In the USA we do not have a free market.***
Castro has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs - everything from party clowns to food vendors to accountants - and has pledged to streamline the state-dominated economy by eliminating half a million government workers.
***That must be a huge percentage of govt workers. How come a communist country can do cut back on govt workers, but not USA? And great idea, the party clowns who run government can get jobs as party clowns.***
Cuba's government employs more than 80 percent of the workers in the island's command economy, paying wages of just $20 a month in return for free education and health care, and nearly free housing, transportation and basic foods.
***The future of USA, where presently 1 in 6 USA citizens collects food stamps.***
Castro has said repeatedly that the system is not working since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2008, but he has vowed that Cuba will remain a socialist state.
***Like China, ha!, too bad USA politicians cannot admit our system is not working.***
Cubans have long bemoaned the ban on property sales, which took effect in stages over the first years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In an effort to fight absentee ownership by wealthy landlords, Fidel enacted a reform that gave title to whoever lived in a home. Most who left the island forfeited their properties to the state.
***See in a free market abandoned homes are homesteadable, or at least subject to adverse possession. The government need not have anything to do with it. Private property rights sorts i all out.***
Since no property market was allowed, the rules have meant that for decades Cubans could only exchange property through complicated barter arrangements, or through even murkier black-market deals where thousands of dollars change hands under the table, with no legal recourse if transactions go bad.
***Sounds like how it works in USA. Think about it.***
Some Cubans entered into sham marriages to make deed transfers easier. Others made deals to move into homes ostensibly to care for an elderly person living there, only to inherit the property when the person died.
***Not a bad idea or USA, and a way to allows elders to remain in their homes and not shipped off to “Bide-A-Wee” ol’ folks home for liquidation.***
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