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How the USSR Radically Reduced Inequality, Even Among its Adversaries
(www.socialisteconomist.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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If you drag everyone down to the ground that's kinda what happens.
Agreed, after the fall of socialism that’s what happened.
no you dont understand, the USSR made people in the US poor somehow and thus more equal. no, i dont know what
are, why do you ask?
Opps, turns out creating a bunch of charts without fixing the value makes life in the USSR look amazing.... Only no, no it was not. Go back make all of your charts again, but this time dont use relative change or log to make things look like they were closer or better.
Oh man, what did the US and UK have that the USSR didn't? That's right, a giant fucking empire grinding hundreds of millions of third world slaves into the dirt.
And yet, even without that the USSR was growing so much faster it would have caught up to and surpassed them eventually - until they couped it, destroyed it and ravaged its people and economy.
Look at where the U.S.S.R started and also 1940-1945 in comparison to the U.S. Eastern Europe was just dirt poor, and then relative to the U.S took a massive hit as Nazis ravaged their countries. Looking at relative growth of GDP is valid because it equalizes for how little the U.S.S.R started out with, and what it overcame. The U.S.S.R was not perfect by any means, but materially life in the U.S.S.R got better at a faster rate than capitalist countries, and those graphs also show that more people enjoyed that growth than those in capitalists countries where GDP is basically just a measure of "how rich the rich are."
Are you legitimately suggesting that the USSR and the UK/US started off on the same level of footing? Is history a series of static snapshots unrelated to what came before or what will come afterwards to you?
You're deeply unserious.
That's pretty wrong though. Check some numbers on USSR citizens pre-fall and compare them with some European countries and thr US at the time.
Look I appreciate value and history of socialism, but suggesting that life was good under Soviet rule ignores reality. If you talk to people who lived under it life was so bad that risking death and imprisonment to flee to the west was a worthwhile endeavor. Bread lines existed, famine happened, quality of goods was shockingly bad, violence was how order was maintained, and the idea of free speech and discourse even in ones own home came with great personal risk.
Now, dont think for a second that just because I take issue with remembering the USSR with rose glasses I think things are all rainbows and holding hands in the west throughout history. Capitalism is clearly more destructive to the world. Capitalism created global warming and climate change, it has extracted nearly all wealth and value from people to the extent that most people in the US struggle with basic needs.
Suggesting that authoritarian police states like the USSR are where life was good is a dangerous re-painting of history, as is suggesting that capitalism comes with no risks or costs to humanity. We obviously need something better, but the USSR is not the history lesson we should base our next society on.
I was specifically commenting on some common economic figures I've seen. I'm not into authoritarian governments.
Speaking of experiences though, the systems in the Eastern bloc weren't identical in every country and for everyone. I know people who feel the regime they escaped was hell on earth. I know people who lived well and have been worse off ever since the collapse. This survey from a few years ago provides some insight on people's attitudes in aggregate:
I grew up in Soviet union. Life there was absolutely fine. What you're spewing here is absolute nonsense.
I'm really glad that was your experience, for my friends and family who got out and to the west life was measurable worse under the USSR.
Your friends and family weren't representative of the majority of the people. The empirical data clearly shows this:
Let's start with some academic studies on USSR
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
Next, we can look at how do people who lived under both systems feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
So do your handlers just provide you with these copypastas or do you make them yourself?
Say something critical of Russia. I dare you.
Russia is a capitalist shithole that's a mirror of the west. Quite telling that your instinct is to smear people when in lieu of having any actual counterpoint.
It's the worst of both systems.
Even after decades of capitalism it's still not nearly as bad as the US in terms of labor rights thanks to the legacy of USSR https://archive.ph/9tMtq
That’s a lot of words to say that you can’t read