It’s very funny to blame “communist propaganda” when all my schooling was from a capitalist perspective. I never even knew what communism was until I searched for alternatives because of being dissatisfied with the existing system.
If you think communism is a solution to your problems, you’re dead wrong. You’ve been told things you wanted to hear, not the truth how communist state looks like in real life.
“Been told” lol. I’m reminded of back in high school when I told my parents I thought gay people should have rights and they responded “who’s putting these crazy ideas into your head?” It is, in fact, possible for me to come to conclusions on my own.
I remember my father telling me how he miraculously managed to get permit to leave the country in the 80s to work in capitalist Europe. He returned with insane fortune of like, $500, which he later spent on paying off mortgage when system fell apart in the 90s.
It’s tragic that your family had to spend that money on a mortgage because the state that provided free (or heavily subsidized) housing collapsed. Fucking capitalism, amirite?
state that provided free (or heavily subsidized) housing
You weren’t getting any housing in that system. You could enlist in a queue and wait for 20-30 years to get piss poor commie block apartment. My father was one of very few people who were just well enough for building a house. He was struggling with money, rationing of materials, corruption and poor quality of work, while our family of four lived in 20m2 apartment like animals in stables.
Poor as in “free healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed job, heavily subsidized foodstuffs, cheap subsidized high quality public transit, guaranteed housing at 3-5% of the monthly income, 0% inflation over a span of 40 years, but it’s difficult getting ahold of a car”?
Dogshit healthcare being decades behind that in the west/
free education to the highest level
Education was dogshit lacking the basic necessities, in building falling apart.
guaranteed job
Most jobs were completely unnecessary. They provided nothing of value.
heavily subsidized foodstuffs
Rationed. Not subsidized. You couldn’t just go and buy a fucking bread, or a bar of chocolate, or sugar, or flour, or a washing machine, or TV or a car. Your money was almost worthless. Food stamps were worth more than the money you paid for the food. If you manage to be super lucky and get permit to buy a new car, you could resell it immediately for 2x or even 3x of nominal price. and it wasn’t a good car, it was this piece of shit.
It’s actually funny that this ‘wonderful’ system couldn’t design their own car, and had to resort into buying a design license for utterly outdated modified fiat 500 from filthy capitalist Italy.
0% inflation over a span of 40 years
FUCKING LIES. Check the black market dollar value to see the actual scale of inflation that was happening.
Dogshit healthcare being decades behind that in the west
Cuba, CUBA, has higher life expectancy expectancy than the US. You’re literally bullshitting, the USSR at the time had the highest number of doctors per capita on earth.
Education was dogshit lacking the basic necessities
That’s why they went from being starved peasants to putting the first person in space in the span of 20 years? Again making shit up
Most jobs were completely unnecessary. They provided nothing of value.
Funnily enough, most jobs were much more necessary than jobs in capitalism. No financial sector bullshit, instead focus on heavy industry, agriculture, infrastructure and development. You can make criticisms such as some factories being outdated (due to respect for the workers employed in them and not wanting to fire them as in capitalism), but it’s laughable to me that you’d believe socialist countries had less valuable jobs than 50% of the population working excel tables as we have nowadays lmfao
Rationed. Not subsidized
Both. You specifically needed to ration because inequality being extremely low and prices being subsidized, it was the mechanism to ensure distribution of goods. Nowadays, the mechanism to distribute goods is actual poverty, as in poor people cannot afford it. On average, people don’t have more meat, don’t have more bread, it’s just that rich people enjoy it and poor people get fucked. Rationing was a fair distribution mechanism that ensured everyone had a portion, and much fairer than the contemporary alternative of “the poorest 50% consistently get fucked”. The top 10% richest Americans consume 50% of the goods and services. How’s that distribution going for the rest, who can’t afford a house, a car, or furniture?
and it wasn’t a good car
“Gommunism is when cheap car”. To further elaborate, yes, technology was less developed in the countries that started industrializing in the 1940s than in those which industrialized since the 1800s using the raw materials and slave labor plundered from the global South. The thing with cars and why you cherry-pick them is that they weren’t a priority. Cars are an inefficient mode of transportation and public transit was prioritized. Cars are actually bad and communists have always known this, that polluting and congesting your city with 1-ton murder machines is bad, so they focused on trains, trams and trolleybuses, all much more sustainable, efficient and clean. We could talk about airplanes if you prefer, and how the USSR developed modern aviation competing with that of the US and actually exported it at lower prices than the US could achieve because they were more efficient.
black market dollar
How’s that relevant to inflation? People earned Rubles and paid in Rubles. Prices were literally dictated by policy, the exchange value of the dollar is absolutely irrelevant to the inflation inside the Soviet economy, inflation is not defined by exchange value of a currency in the black market, the definition of inflation I’d “general, sustained increase in prices”. And, over the 40 years between WW2 and Perestroika, prices literally didn’t increase (whereas salaries did increase many times over).
Transformation just uncovered all the lies and sins of previous communist system. Once state run enterprises were allowed to file banktruptcy 30% of them failed immediately. Country was also hit by hyperinflation like a hammer because previous system was printing money like crazy and “fixing” it by price controls and food rationing.
No, that’s what had made me a liberal before lol.
It’s very funny to blame “communist propaganda” when all my schooling was from a capitalist perspective. I never even knew what communism was until I searched for alternatives because of being dissatisfied with the existing system.
If you think communism is a solution to your problems, you’re dead wrong. You’ve been told things you wanted to hear, not the truth how communist state looks like in real life.
“Been told” lol. I’m reminded of back in high school when I told my parents I thought gay people should have rights and they responded “who’s putting these crazy ideas into your head?” It is, in fact, possible for me to come to conclusions on my own.
I remember my father telling me how he miraculously managed to get permit to leave the country in the 80s to work in capitalist Europe. He returned with insane fortune of like, $500, which he later spent on paying off mortgage when system fell apart in the 90s.
It’s tragic that your family had to spend that money on a mortgage because the state that provided free (or heavily subsidized) housing collapsed. Fucking capitalism, amirite?
You weren’t getting any housing in that system. You could enlist in a queue and wait for 20-30 years to get piss poor commie block apartment. My father was one of very few people who were just well enough for building a house. He was struggling with money, rationing of materials, corruption and poor quality of work, while our family of four lived in 20m2 apartment like animals in stables.
Oh no, the free housing isn’t fast enough or big enough, oh no, it looks so drab oh no
What did capitalism do for you? How long do you have to wait now to spend 3% of your income on housing instead of 30%+?
So, communist countries are affordable and $500 can buy you a lot of things?
No. They’re so poor that $500 looks like a fortune
Poor as in “free healthcare, free education to the highest level, guaranteed job, heavily subsidized foodstuffs, cheap subsidized high quality public transit, guaranteed housing at 3-5% of the monthly income, 0% inflation over a span of 40 years, but it’s difficult getting ahold of a car”?
Dogshit healthcare being decades behind that in the west/
Education was dogshit lacking the basic necessities, in building falling apart.
Most jobs were completely unnecessary. They provided nothing of value.
Rationed. Not subsidized. You couldn’t just go and buy a fucking bread, or a bar of chocolate, or sugar, or flour, or a washing machine, or TV or a car. Your money was almost worthless. Food stamps were worth more than the money you paid for the food. If you manage to be super lucky and get permit to buy a new car, you could resell it immediately for 2x or even 3x of nominal price. and it wasn’t a good car, it was this piece of shit.
It’s actually funny that this ‘wonderful’ system couldn’t design their own car, and had to resort into buying a design license for utterly outdated modified fiat 500 from filthy capitalist Italy.
FUCKING LIES. Check the black market dollar value to see the actual scale of inflation that was happening.
Cuba, CUBA, has higher life expectancy expectancy than the US. You’re literally bullshitting, the USSR at the time had the highest number of doctors per capita on earth.
That’s why they went from being starved peasants to putting the first person in space in the span of 20 years? Again making shit up
Funnily enough, most jobs were much more necessary than jobs in capitalism. No financial sector bullshit, instead focus on heavy industry, agriculture, infrastructure and development. You can make criticisms such as some factories being outdated (due to respect for the workers employed in them and not wanting to fire them as in capitalism), but it’s laughable to me that you’d believe socialist countries had less valuable jobs than 50% of the population working excel tables as we have nowadays lmfao
Both. You specifically needed to ration because inequality being extremely low and prices being subsidized, it was the mechanism to ensure distribution of goods. Nowadays, the mechanism to distribute goods is actual poverty, as in poor people cannot afford it. On average, people don’t have more meat, don’t have more bread, it’s just that rich people enjoy it and poor people get fucked. Rationing was a fair distribution mechanism that ensured everyone had a portion, and much fairer than the contemporary alternative of “the poorest 50% consistently get fucked”. The top 10% richest Americans consume 50% of the goods and services. How’s that distribution going for the rest, who can’t afford a house, a car, or furniture?
“Gommunism is when cheap car”. To further elaborate, yes, technology was less developed in the countries that started industrializing in the 1940s than in those which industrialized since the 1800s using the raw materials and slave labor plundered from the global South. The thing with cars and why you cherry-pick them is that they weren’t a priority. Cars are an inefficient mode of transportation and public transit was prioritized. Cars are actually bad and communists have always known this, that polluting and congesting your city with 1-ton murder machines is bad, so they focused on trains, trams and trolleybuses, all much more sustainable, efficient and clean. We could talk about airplanes if you prefer, and how the USSR developed modern aviation competing with that of the US and actually exported it at lower prices than the US could achieve because they were more efficient.
How’s that relevant to inflation? People earned Rubles and paid in Rubles. Prices were literally dictated by policy, the exchange value of the dollar is absolutely irrelevant to the inflation inside the Soviet economy, inflation is not defined by exchange value of a currency in the black market, the definition of inflation I’d “general, sustained increase in prices”. And, over the 40 years between WW2 and Perestroika, prices literally didn’t increase (whereas salaries did increase many times over).
So he spent all of it on the failings of capitalism in the 90s?
Transformation just uncovered all the lies and sins of previous communist system. Once state run enterprises were allowed to file banktruptcy 30% of them failed immediately. Country was also hit by hyperinflation like a hammer because previous system was printing money like crazy and “fixing” it by price controls and food rationing.