Professor Fahimi
Political science 12
06 December 2012
USA vs. Cuba Both of these countries couldn’t be more different in the how they provide their population with their basic need. When I say basic need I mean food, clothes, shelter, job, unemployment benefits, and etc. The US is a democratic country with a mixed economy and Cuba is an authoritarian country with a command economy. Yet both of these nations have one thing in common and that is that they each country believes they do the best job in providing the basic needs for their population The US is a modern society and needs to have a modern definition of what a modern democracy is. The definition of a modern democracy is a form of government, where a constitution guarantees basic personal and political rights, fair and free elections, and independent courts of law (Marcus G. Jud, 2004). Most of the population has become accustom to this definition but they still want more help. That includes food stamps, unemployment, health insurance, public school, and etc. The problem now is that US politician have and want to cut more money out of the budget of many of these problem creating more problems for the working, low wage families that live in US. Cuba is slowing advancing in this modern society and has been under the rule of Fidel Castro as either president or as prime minister from February of 1959 to February of 2008 and then his brother Raul Castro took over. Almost fifty years the Communist party of Cuba has been in control. The Cuban government is categorized as an Authoritarian system. That is defined as a government run by a small group of people and has no distinct state ideology and grants a small amount of freedom as long as those right doesn’t go against their laws and policies; the most important for an authoritarian system is to maintain power and personal enrichment on the cost of the country and of the population (Marcus G. Jud, 2004). Their economy has provided
Cited: 1. Marcus G. Jud. (2004). Democracy building. Retrieved from http://www.democracy-building.info/definition-democracy.html 2 3. Beggs, J. (2012). About.com. Retrieved from http://economics.about.com/od/howtheuseconomyworks/a/mixed_economy.htm 4 5. Pike, J. O. (2011). Global security. In Global security. Retrieved from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/cuba/economy.htm 6 7. The Heritage Foundation. (2012). United states. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/UnitedStates 8 9. ushistory.org. (2008). American government. Retrieved from http://www.ushistory.org/gov/13a.asp 10 11. CIA. (2012, February 21). Cia world factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html 12 13. Freedom House. (2012). Freedom house. Retrieved from http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2012/cuba-0