[A doctor makes about $40 per month.]

Did you catch that? This guy makes more in one day than a doctor makes in a month.

And he's a taxi driver.

Well, he's actually a trained engineer, but engineers make even less than doctors.

[So I like being a taxi driver. Not an engineer]

Welcome to the Cuban economy.

Right after the socialist revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro's government seized almost all private businesses and land.

You won't have to worry about next year. The state will do your planning from now on!

Every restaurant, factory, hospital and home was property of the government.

The State set prices for everything and decided how much people got paid.

The private sector disappeared overnight.

The world these men live in desperately needs economic reforms.

You can see the result of this if you go looking for food in Havana today.

When I showed up, I was pretty excited to see what street food was on offer.

But all I could find was this. Just this. Ham sandwiches. Everywhere.

Here is a typical scene in a Cuban eatery: too many employees in an empty establishment with empty shelves.

They're just waiting for food deliveries from the government, and putting in their eight hours so they can go home.

They get paid the same whether they sell one plate of food, or fifty.

This model just doesn't work.

Cuba survived for many years with subsidies from the Soviet Union.

[Long live communism!]

But since its collapse, the economy‘s been getting worse every year.

This lady is showing me her government ration cards that she's kept for decades.

Cubans use these cards to go to the storage houses to get their monthly rations.

[Today, we get less cooking oil, less grains, less sugar. We don't even get soap or detergent anymore. Everyday we get less and less.]

[Have they improved in any aspect at all?]

The government realized this was becoming a problem in the 90s, and started giving out private licenses, fueling a small but growing private sector.

I stumbled upon a private restaurant in Havana, and it was a totally different experience than the public ones.

There was actually movement, and good service.

The owners had to sell good food if they wanted to stay in business.

Which brings me back to the taxi driver and the doctor.

The reason why taxi drivers make so much more than doctors is because they have private licenses.

Their salaries are not set by the state, and they can charge tourists high prices.

I paid $25 to get from the airport into Havana.

And in that 30 minutes, this driver made more than the average monthly salary of a Cuban, which is $20.

[I put in eight hours as a licensed nurse, and daily, I don't even bring in $2.]

One of the problems with this is that you get highly trained workers leaving their trade to go do mediocre work in the private sector.

This guy is an engineer, but he's cooking in a private restaurant.

These guys are accountants by trade, but are making a killing driving around tourists on taxi bikes.

This woman is a nurse, but she hasn't worked in a hospital in years.

This guy is an electrical engineer, but he opened up a barber shop in his house and makes ten times more than he would in his field of study.

Imagine trying to live on the Cuban average salary of $20 per month.

When you ask them how they do it, they all have the same response.

[We all have to do something on top of our official job.]

[If you don't, you won't eat.]

Just beneath the surface in Cuba is a bustling informal market where Cubans make an additional income on top of their official salary, just to survive.

[We survive thanks to this dark market—this underground market.]

[When I leave my house and cross the street to buy a newspaper, I'm committing the first crime of the day.]

[Because that old man is selling me the paper illegally.]

[The official vendor keeps the papers and sells them to the old man.]

We tend to associate black markets with dangerous activities.

But in Cuba, people sell illegal popsicles, or newspapers—not to get rich, but just to survive.

But things are slowly changing.

Since Fidel's brother Raul took over in 2008, the number of private licenses has increased significantly every year, and 20% of the economy is now private.

But still, most Cubans are jaded by the decades they have had to use illegal creativity just to survive.

[We live in a country with only one party.]

[What could possibly happen? Could there really be change?]