Havana (AP) - The big economic changes Cuba's communist leaders have been promising for years appear finally to be happening in earnest -- and they will be hard.

Cuba on Monday said it is laying off nearly half a million workers, an eye-popping figure in any country, but especially in a nation where the government so totally dominates the economy.

The shift would mean that one-tenth of the island's 5.1 million-strong work force will be looking for jobs in the private sector by April 2011, a drastic change that could mean a radically altered economic outlook, especially for Cubans in their 20s and 30s who have known nothing but a paternalistic communist system ushered in by Fidel Castro in his 1959 revolution.

Continues...

* * * * *

Don't worry amigos, only 90 miles to Florida. You get unemployment, medicaid, welfare, drivers license, housing, democratic voter registration, food stamps, cerveza stamps...