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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (103869)	4/11/2000 4:02:00 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1570548

No the were not. Maybe in poor countries like Rumania, Albania or North Korea, but not in Soviet Union, Poland, GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. I wasn't referring to those countries but rather Russia itself....its economy was very near collapse. If you subtract the delay of the arrival of some fad consumer goods - platform shoees, VCRs, electric can openers, and look at the real living needs - housing, food, cloths, education, health, entertainment, you would be surprised. When I arrived in NY, I was surprised to see the number of people who lived well below the standard of living in Czechoslovakia, where I am from. You may say that picking New York City, the most socialist place in the US is unfair, and you would be partially right. I don't disagree with you here....NYC is one of the poorest parts of this country. Running out of money is also a concept that does not really apply. Some countries ran up external debts, but those don't really count much for internal accounting, since the government had a monopoly in every aspect, and could command people to to things, rather than trying to induce them with monetary rewards. <<Russia let the poles, the GDR, the czechs etc go because they could not afford to maintain a military presence in those countries any longer.>> The cost of maintaining those troops are a complete non-issue. They have a conscription. Soldiers get paid next to nothing while serving, live in low quality military housing. It was the lack of confidence to use these that accelerated the fall of Communism. Joe, I don't care if the troops made nada....keeping a standing army in place costs big bucks if only to keep the equipment serviced and Russia could not afford it anymore. I am sure it killed the Russian leaders to give up the eastern bloc....it was their buffer with the West. ted