but, this is a crazy argument, this idea that america is wealthy because of markets and cuba is poor because of no markets.
1) does america really have markets? it has lots of cartels. study the price of bananas - it changes everywhere at the same time, all the time. it has lots of corporate welfare. i'm not so sure about this.
2) america is the global empire. it's extracted massive wealth through theft, slavery and imperialist exploitation. meanwhile, cuba was a forgotten backwater in a collapsed empire. markets? hmmm.
3) there were these sanctions that were put on cuba. i think the president knows a thing or two about them.
i don't want to argue against his point too much. i think he's making an error in looking at capitalism and communism as competing systems rather than as expressions of the same system. what we need is not really a dialectic, but a reapproach to a different organization of society brought on by deindustrialization. but, in the end that could very well approximate a dialectic, because the deindustrialization does, in some ways, bring back aspects of the preconditions of liberalism. i don't know how you approach automation without social ownership, but that's just the initial conditions - the point is to open up greater freedom in social interaction by eliminating want.
but, you can't just stand there and say america is rich because of capitalism and cuba is poor because of communism and expect people to take you seriously because you're the president. it's crazy, no matter who you are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BadFTesAPzY