PBS, NPR and the Demoncretin party are breeding commies like roaches.
In the scientific method, we form a hypothesis, experment and reach a conclusion.
So for 100 years we ran the same experiment in human suffering "socialism".
We did "East Germany vs. West Germany" we did "North Korea vs. South Korea" we did "Cuba vs. the rest of Latin America (yes Cuba is the poorest in this hemisphere) we did "Tiawan vs. China" we did "Eastern Bloc Europe vs. Western Europe" we did "The United States vs. USSR" we did and we did and we did, and at one point we were even willing to blow the entire planet up over this question about "who's property is it?"
After all the death and human suffering and grinding poverty we still have people here in the USA that believe it will work this time, no matter how many times we test it.
That according to Einstein is the definition of insanity.
I think 6% of GDP is reasonable (period)... to take 28-50% of the fruit of anybodies labor is theft. It's not your money, get it. If you take it by force you are stealing.
Before 1913 the US Government took no income taxes and the US was by far the riches country the world had ever seen in so short a time with the largest middle class ever.
So commies unite for tested and proven poverty!
unions gave us our big middle class. nobody complained about the federal deficit before the '80s, when reagan cut taxes for the rich.
communist countries were never truly socialist. stalin abandoned marx's fundamental principle of 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' by changing the last word to 'work' instead of 'need.'
oppressive dictatorship is bad whether right or left, but capitalist countries made it worse by refusing to trade with commies and doing all they could to sabotage them. that made them paranoid and even more oppressive as well as hurting their economies.
but no, cuba's not the poorest in the hemisphere.
check your facts.
oh, and last time i looked,
china's gdp was pretty high and growing fast.