Although the postwar British Labour Party was freely elected, it brought Brits a more limited degree of the economic stagnation that afflicted the people of the undemocratic Soviet Union and its satellites.
Having first visited the mother of socialism, the Soviet Union, in April 1967, I can extract a few historical nuggets to enlighten Sanders voters.
The coupon sellers, employees of the state, couldn't have cared less about their customers or the poor workmanship of Soviet shoe factories.
Soviet citizens had to endure these conditions because they were locked in by borders controlled by the KGB. Boris Yeltsin, a former member of the Soviet ruling elite who had turned against socialism, was elected president of the Russian Republic in 1991 and began the process of dissolving the morally and financially bankrupt Soviet empire.
Most surprising to him were "Those ordinary people in America, who radiated optimism and faith in themselves and in their country." He was "Shattered" by a visit to a supermarket, where he saw "Shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort." He wrote: "For the first time, I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially superrich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it."
The late Abram Bergson, a specialist in Soviet economics at Harvard, estimated that in 1985 output per capita in the Soviet Union was only 42% of what the average American produced and consumption was only 29% of the American level.
Prices and production quotas were set by a huge Soviet planning bureaucracy called Gosplan, staffed by thousands of "Economists." Free-market pricing efficiently allocates resources.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-strikes-back-11580859566
Having first visited the mother of socialism, the Soviet Union, in April 1967, I can extract a few historical nuggets to enlighten Sanders voters.
The coupon sellers, employees of the state, couldn't have cared less about their customers or the poor workmanship of Soviet shoe factories.
Soviet citizens had to endure these conditions because they were locked in by borders controlled by the KGB. Boris Yeltsin, a former member of the Soviet ruling elite who had turned against socialism, was elected president of the Russian Republic in 1991 and began the process of dissolving the morally and financially bankrupt Soviet empire.
Most surprising to him were "Those ordinary people in America, who radiated optimism and faith in themselves and in their country." He was "Shattered" by a visit to a supermarket, where he saw "Shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort." He wrote: "For the first time, I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially superrich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it."
The late Abram Bergson, a specialist in Soviet economics at Harvard, estimated that in 1985 output per capita in the Soviet Union was only 42% of what the average American produced and consumption was only 29% of the American level.
Prices and production quotas were set by a huge Soviet planning bureaucracy called Gosplan, staffed by thousands of "Economists." Free-market pricing efficiently allocates resources.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialism-strikes-back-11580859566
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