> Saying "they just earned 20 bucks a month" is not enough -- one also has to know how things were for the majority of people in these countries before socialis

> Saying "they just earned 20 bucks a month" is not enough -- one also has to know how things were for the majority of people in these countries before socialism, in order to compare. Well, before the war literacy rate was low and noone had a TV set, the socialist state has come and these things took a fortunate turn ;) Or if we truly want to put things into perspective, prewar Poland, while obviously poorer than Germany or the UK, was better off than Spain or Portugal (not to mention eg. [South] Korea). A few decades later did young Spaniards dream of picking strawberries in Poland, or was it the other way round?