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This needs a retitle of "Being poor in the USA". You need to talk to someone who grew up in the DDR or the CCCP to get some perspective (although I bet people
by chx 9y ago
This needs a retitle of "Being poor in the USA".
You need to talk to someone who grew up in the DDR or the CCCP to get some perspective (although I bet people from the so called third world would have quite something to add, too!). I am a little better as I grew up in socialist Hungary.
Some memories that this article brought up: off-brand toys? You couldn't even buy LEGO until like 1982 for Hungarian forints. A few shops for diplomats sold it for hard currency which was impossible to get.
$800 cars? Comrade, you need to wait 5-10 years for a car and it's made out of paper and plastic. And it is literally incapable of going above 60 miles per hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away. - man, I got a root canal done without painkillers because they ran out of painkillers.
Being poor is Goodwill underwear. - our undershirts looked like gray rags because you couldn't get whitening detergent for years. It was a fluke that didn't get corrected until the next five year plan.
air conditioning. --- HAHAHAHAHA try living in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict one of these, oven in the summer, too hot in the winter because the central heating is cranked up the wazzoo and you can't do shit about it.
- rusk 9y agoYes, there's degrees of poor ... poor all the way down. This struck a chord with me: Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash. I've been poor enough in my life that dumpster diving was appealing and I'm glad I'm not now, but at least in my scenario there was a dumpster to dive into. I spent some time by Lake Malawi there a couple of years ago and they don't even have dumpsters. Bottle-caps, and waste-paper from the (foreign aid funded) health clinic are valuable raw materials for whatever local craft industries there are. Being poor means these dodgy strangers showing up and splashing money around and who then start making inappropriate advances on the children. But even along the lake they are privileged by having access to water and whatever tourism industry there is. Away from the lake, being poor means not having clothes. Being poor means a minor injury is a death sentence. Some of our philanthropist billionaires get some flack for the manner and means by which they distribute their aid, but a friend of mine working as a pharmacist there would just say "thank god for Bill Gates".
- teddyh 9y agoThis isn’t a competition. This is supposed to give those who are less poor some perspective. So for you, this article is not so useful.
- mastazi 9y agoMaybe parent just used that remark as a way of breaking ice and sharing their story?
- jitbit 9y agoThank you for writing this. I grew up in the USSR. And then early Russia (the country was recovering from the USSR wreckage, even more painful). The "$800 car" bit made me smile too. PS. Now, when I live in a nice EU town, own a somewhat successful software company, and my #1 mission is so my kids never, NEVER EVER, _EVEN IN THEIR DREAMS_ have a tiny glimpse of that life.
- chx 9y agoЯ с тобой согласен, товарищ! That's the mission indeed. I fucking started a school in Hungary to give a better education to my (well, my brother's, details) little ones. Hungarian education didn't change enough from thirty years ago.