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Speaking from the practical point of view ( not price wise) - yes, they are luxuries, since one can easily get by without owning them in Europe. In the US as I've already said cars are a necessity, not luxury.
You really talk like someone who never traveled anywhere and never see anything... First of all Europe is not just big cities with excellent public transportation - plenty of people live in small towns where cars are a much a necessity as they are in the US. Second, streets of every big European city are filled with cars, all my European friends have cars, each and every one of them. None of them filthy rich
You were just talking about cliches, Europe where from big cities to small towns people use public transportation and not cars, is one of them. False.
No, that is the opposite what the west would like to believe, which is why there remains decades later sucn an intensive propaganda campaign by the west to blame it entirely on the internal philosophical defects of anything that even smacks of anti-AynRandism.
True, there are additional complexities, because the USSR also did other things wrong downagenda.
However, the evidence is convincing that A) the USSR started from a much weaker economic base than America and her largesse-supported allies and B) the necessity for the USSR to construct a resource-wasting state-of-the-art defense against constant and pee-existing threats of American nuclear attack, as well as two actual wars started by the US on Russia's own continent to obstruct Soviet economic alliances with their neighbors.
It is patently absurd to think that the USSR spent so much of their skimpy and war-weary national resources developing nuclear weapons so they could attack and subjugate, without provocation, an advanced nation that was already decades ahead of them in the capability and actual deployment of nuclear weapons. But this wasting of their national resources they in fact did, for reasons the west would not like us to believe and still refusals to acknowledge, and that virtually assured economic failure.
There is such a theoretical concept as a level playing field. But the US, with an entire untouched continent to exploit and oceanic insulation from outside external enemies, has created a world in which there will never be a level playing field in the present era. Everybody else either becomes a US puppet, or loses, regardless of the merit or the virtue of what they may wish to do. No other nation in the history of the world has ever so greedily and tenaciously and single-mindedly endeavored to seize control of the entire planet, or spent so much resources toward that goal. In the name of anti-socialism.
And that is the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you threw a chicken in the fox house, would you need to ask why it failed, or argue that chickenhood is defective and doomed to failure by its very nature?
WHAT? Which wars? Korea, Vietnam, India, Afghanistan I, Afghanistan II, Irag I, IraqII?
FWIW my cousins in Communist East Germany talked quietly and privately with me in 1975 about their desire to have Western Living standards. They would pick up West German TV broadcasts and coveted the goods we had. In 1990, there was excitement. In 1995 there was a sense of "What have we wished for?" The realities of a competitive free-market, capitalist economy resulted in many unemployed. They did all pretty much admit that they still felt their children would be way better off, despite the pains of changing economic systems. I need to go back soon to see how they feel and think currently.
I think it was too big. Another thing too, is the fact that by the late 1980s, it had been roughly a lifetime since the establishment began. Maybe the founders of the project dying had something to do with the empire itself dying.
Good luck. It would take Russia decades to catcth up technologically if of course Russia wasn't plundered by ex-KGB officers turned busiinesmen.
If you are such a fan of Russia and Russian values why do you live in America?
Because by the time I've learned that it was American government that made dirty deals with the KGB and communist bosses that allowed them to plunder the country, I've already had American citizenship after granted political asylum and it was too late to change it. I have no interest living in Russia still run by the former KGB officer ( courtesy of the IMF, Jeffry Sachs and Co,) but if I could leave the US and move to Canada, I'd do it in a heart beat.
I don't particularly like the idea of living in the country that betrayed the aspirations of Russian intelligentsia in post-Soviet period and played its part in suffering of many during the nineties, but I have limited abilities to move elsewhere. It's that simple.
Because by the time I've learned that it was American government that made dirty deals with the KGB and communist bosses that allowed them to plunder the country.
But of course, it is always the fault of those dirty American capitalistic pigs! LOL
But of course, it is always the fault of those dirty American capitalistic pigs! LOL
Jeffrey Sachs admits that he and the IMF screwed up royally in Russia. The 1998 crisis, loans stolen to beef up oligarchs' and political figures' Swiss Bank accounts, etc. was their fault. He says so in one of his books, ironically named "The End of Poverty".
Here we go again. This time it is CIA plotting with KGB to rob poor Russians. LOL
Just educate yourself about it, ok, instead of spouting recycled, worn-out Cold War lines. You completely misunderstand erasure, and in your zeal to prop up long-dead stereotypes, you're creating a false cartoon image of who erasure is. Drop the arrogance, and you might actually learn something here.
I think it was too big. Another thing too, is the fact that by the late 1980s, it had been roughly a lifetime since the establishment began. Maybe the founders of the project dying had something to do with the empire itself dying.
Russia was ill-suited to become a Communist society overnight. It was kind of shoe-horned into Marxist theory (seeing as how is was barely out of feudalism, and hadn't developed capitalism, much). But what people forget, is that the engine of Lenin's economy wasn't socialist at all, it was pure Yankee capitalism. He invited US industrialists like Henry Ford and Armin Hammar to come and help rebuild Russia after it was ruined by WWI. This was called the "New Economic Plan (NEP). It helped kick-start a ruined country. Stalin promptly put an end to that. So really, the revolution itself got off to a very shaky start. The revolutionaries knew what they wanted to destroy, but once in power, they had no idea what to do next, no plan for how to build the society they wanted.
Maybe seen in that light, one might think that the whole experiment was doomed from the start. Really, they had to build a country from scratch. It's amazing they managed as well as they did, considering what they had to work with.
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