Which brings us to point number two about Castroite/communist unequalness. There is no equivalent inequality in the democratic west than the inequality between a dictatorship’s nomenklatura and its captive citizens. All animals are equal under communism, but some animals are more equal than others. The ones that are more equal can travel abroad, shop at stores with actual goods using salaries of actual money, and live mostly free from fear of the omnipresent Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. The ones that don’t have their entire families barred—not by lack of income, but through direct government order—from good schools and good jobs. They can only dream of owning such extravagances as refridgerators, cannot place an international phone call, do not dare speak freely, and cannot leave the island without escaping, just like a prisoner. Which is what they are.

Want to see some truly stomach-churning inequality? Go visit The DDR Museum sometime, and compare the sections about ordinary East German lives and those of their dungeon masters. The single most potent weapon against Cuban inequality is not somehow blocking U.S. remittances, or forcibly funneling them through Castro’s benevolent equalizers, but to dismantle the Cuban police state.