Ted,
I was talking about Russia's ability to carry and service the debt required to maintain its hold over Eastern Europe.
As I said, Poland was the only country that had debt worth notice was Poland with about $30 billion, but it was manageable, not anywhere near the 3rd world debt burdens.
Russia, with almost 10 times the population, 10 times the GDP had debt only slightly higher (somewhere between $50 and $80 billion). At this time, Russia had at it's disposal easily tradable commodities such oil, gold diamonds.
Maybe where you are coming from re: debt is the situation in 1989 - 1992, when debt increased to $90+ billion and it made news. If that's the case, you are right, but that was only the corpse of the former Soviet Union.
If someone killed me and my wife, our mortgage payments would not be made either. But we would be dead for reason someone killed us, not because of the mortgage payments. The same with Soviet Union, where the act of killing of the Soviet Union were Reagan's policies.
They were.....my understanding was that things worsened throughout the 80's, that factories were antiquated, that certain product lines like the DDR's trank (sp) car were little more than elaborate lawnmowers as an example, that assembly lines functioned poorly, that in Russia proper food was scarce in certain areas of the country etc. Apparently that was American propraganda.
All of east german cars all had 2 stroke engines (I guess that's where your lawn mower reference is from) and were generally poor quality. Cars from Czechoslovakia were much better, and believe it or not, some Russian cars were not all that bad. Russia somehow obtained a license from Fiat to make an older model of their car, and after my family had an older Ford, we had this Russian car called Lada, and it was OK. It gets you from point A to point B as any low end car does, you may not have power windows etc. but it provided basic transportation.
The only problem is if people tried to compare western cars with East block ones, which very few did, especially in Russia, which was very isolated from the rest of the world.
What most people don't understand is that when it comes to prosperity, what really matters is absolute prosperity, not relative. With exception of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the rest of the East block made good progress in absolute terms. The centrally planned economies can do some things, until they hit the ceiling, beyond which only a free market can take you. East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungare were at this ceiling for a long time, and in 80s, even Soviet Union reached it, so the changes in absolute living standards did not change much, which doesn't mean things were getting worse.
I think you are thinking only in relative terms, and by that standard, things got worse. For example, I grew up about 100 miles from Vienna, and while the level of prosperity was similar between Austria and Czechoslovakia in 20s and 30s, Austria continued to grow, while Czechoslovakia stagnated under communist rule. And while most people in Czechoslovakia knew it, despite the propaganda, the rest of the eastern block was much more isolated from the west, and influenced by the propaganda a lot more.
And what were the components of that test.
Reagan challenged Russia in the most marginal ends of the expanding Soviet empire - Sanctions against Cuba (where eastern block sunk billions of dollars), outright war in Afganistan, support of Contras in Nicaragua, invasion of Grenada, support of rebels in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia are just few that come to my mind. The trouble is that it is easy to support guerillas, it is harder (and a lot costlier) to keep an unpopular government in power. After gaining power in these marginal countries, it was a huge drain on resources to keep propping up these governments.
Please stop referring to Stalin as some sort of God.....he's beginning to sound like your hero. Yes, Stalin pulled off that sh*t but it was a very different time during very different circumstances. The world was in a depression and Hitler was raising hell in Europe.
Stalin was the hero of the American left for long long time, even while he was committing mass murders, especially to the New York "intellectuals" (see Rosenbergs). While he is not my hero, I recognize that he was a natural leader of communist / collectivist movement.
You consider that an unintelligent observation but you had no trouble condemning Gore for quitting seminary school.
You may recall that my argument was with Scumbria who kept going about how Gore was the best, the smartest. I never claimed he was a moron. I don't think it is something out of ordinary to have trouble with Calculus. He obviously has other skills (other than being highly cerebral) and discipline that brought him very close to becoming the president of the US. The same for Bush (W) and Reagan.
Secondly, I know I am more intelligent then Reagan but then again many people are.
And yes, he is a moron.
Lol. I think I could beat Reagan in math, probably physics, definitely in knowledge about computers, but I would really hesitate to say that this narrow are makes me more intelligent than Reagan.
Speaking of which, there were some studies done recently about people's real IQ and their self assessment. The striking finding was that the lower you went in people's real IQ, the higher their assessment of themselves was.
Of course I am speaking in general.
Joe |
