Ummm, they are not selling any property, beach front or otherwise.
They don't need to be selling it, merely renting.
American sugar growers are already protected by insanely high tariffs.
And yet Cuba can, at times, beat the prices anyways. Besides, I think the US sugar tariffs are wrong.
Cuban Tobacco has been ruined by Communism. Ask anyone who's had one. The cache' is gone.
And you repeat what I said why? I already said it sucks these days.
Trained Doctors. I'm not seeing a shortage and in fact India and Pakistan seem to be sending us their excess. And most US insurance companies don't pay claims outside the US. And last I checked, most of the world comes to the US to get procedures done. Otherwise, many, many, many other Caribbean countries would already be doing that. (most just stick to training doctors. e.g. Grenada.)
And India and Pakistan sending us their excess doesn't indicate a shortage how? We can just get doctors from yet another location. I was just throwing some ideas out there. It's up to them to capitalize on it.
US Companies not paying claims outside the US - Have you forgotten that a rather substantial segment of our population
doesn't have insurance? That others have rather insane copays? There are people who fly to
Singapore for medical procedures because it's substantially cheaper with or without insurance. Sometimes, with arrangement, insurance companies WILL pay because it's outright cheaper for people to do it. How much? Over a billion USD worth in 2012.
And you keep talking about "leverage" and "influence". No, we would not have any. If we did, then they would have been working to get back in our good graces for the last 50 years. And that's not going to change no matter how much money we throw at them. Does Canada and Europe have any influence ?? No.
You're not making a good argument, you know. The two just don't fit. That we don't
currently have leverage or influence currently with the 50 year embargo is something I completely acknowledge. It's a core part of my argument, remember? You have not linked said lack of influence, when we've done the equivalent of hide in our house and refuse to so much as talk with Cuba, with a continuing lack of influence with the embargo ended, you know, when we actually start talking and trading with our neighbor.
Or are you such that you think that a neighbor that you never talk to, never talks to you, and avoids you at every opportunity will have the same influence on you as the neighbor who comes over every so often, talks shop with you, looks after your kids, borrows your lawnmower, etc?
And yes, the other countries do have influence. They just aren't exploiting it all that much. This is a classic gripping hand problem. You know, where you have a clod of dirt or something that you're holding. Grip too tightly and it just oozes past your fist. Hold it gently and you have more control than holding it tightly.
The (virtually) complete embargo is a very tight fist. As a result, all our influence oozes out. As we've seen when we actually relax our controls a touch, they DO respond. Because we require great leaps of change, without even assurance that we'd relax even if they did, hell, we've given counter-evidence by NOT relaxing our controls as they transition, ever so slightly, towards a more free market, that nothing they can do would satisfy us, so why even try?
So yeah, we don't currently have any leverage. We've broken that plank. That's what we need to rebuild first.
Let me ask you this: What would you consider a "baby step" in the right direction? Would they consider it a 'baby step'?
