It's a great idea - provide everyone the staples they need at a fraction of the market rate. Until it runs out...
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Even Castro realized that you can’t learn on an empty stomach, so in 1962 he started giving everyone a monthly food distribution. All you need is a ration booklet.
It gets you rice, beans, and a host of other dry goods. And it’s all incredibly cheap:
• Sugar’s a penny a pound.
• Oil’s less than two cents.
• Salt is practically free.
In fact, the entire distribution costs about $1.20 – That’s 40 times cheaper than the open market. In an effort to save money, cigarettes were taken off the distribution list, along with certain hygiene products, like toothpaste. Cubans now have to pay two day’s wages for a brand name bar of soap and almost as much for the local kind.
It’s not a high-tech system – everything’s still done by hand. But it seems to work, and the manager is extremely well organized. Unfortunately, the distribution only provides about half your necessary daily calories and each year they cut it back even more.
The meat distribution across the street used to include fish, chicken, sausage, and sometimes eggs. Nowadays if they have anything at all, it’s blended soybean paste.
Once they sell out they just lock their doors until next month.
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