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So you’re saying the USSR had more wealth inequality than the United States today? I’m genuinely curious if that’s true or not. But it doesn’t sound like you h

So you’re saying the USSR had more wealth inequality than the United States today? I’m genuinely curious if that’s true or not. But it doesn’t sound like you have a source. Is that just a feeling you have?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Well, officially the USSR had very little wealth inequality. But... what fraction of the population got to shop at the special stores? (You might consider them the "rich", because they could buy more things, and for less money.) I'm pretty sure they weren't more than 5% of the population, and maybe significantly less, but I don't recall specifically. And that's if communism was functioning "normally". Didn't Romania turn into a kleptocracy? What was the level of wealth inequality there?
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I mean it is certainly the case that the top 5% get to shop at better stores in the USA. And the top 1% even more so. Now if you’re really concerned with who was authoritarian, I wouldn’t defend them. But it sure doesn’t seem obvious to me that there was more inequality in soviet Russia than there is today in the USA.
d1zzy 7y ago
The fact that you can't get accurate income data from communist regimes that cover the entire society is also a sign of applied communism being a big lie/illusion, it needs to lie to its people and keep them in the dark to preserve it. I grew up in communism and indeed there were people who were "more equal" than others, mostly those well connected with high positioned party members (if themselves weren't such party members). That allowed them much better living conditions than the regular "worker", they ate meat every day (yes, it may sound strange to the average reader of HN but meat wasn't something that we in the 80s in Eastern Europe had access to very often), had bread (for the rest of us it was rationed), soft toilet paper, jeans (I would have killed for a pair of jeans!), pepsi (no coca-cola tho) and a million little other things that people living in Western Europe in the 80s took for granted. But hey, most of us were "equal" in our poverty, so communism can't be that bad.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Well, officially the USSR had very little wealth inequality. But... what fraction of the population got to shop at the special stores? (You might consider them the "rich", because they could buy more things, and for less money.) I'm pretty sure they weren't more than 5% of the population, and maybe significantly less, but I don't recall specifically. And that's if communism was functioning "normally". Didn't Romania turn into a kleptocracy? What was the level of wealth inequality there?

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
I mean it is certainly the case that the top 5% get to shop at better stores in the USA. And the top 1% even more so. Now if you’re really concerned with who was authoritarian, I wouldn’t defend them. But it sure doesn’t seem obvious to me that there was more inequality in soviet Russia than there is today in the USA.

d1zzy 7y ago

The fact that you can't get accurate income data from communist regimes that cover the entire society is also a sign of applied communism being a big lie/illusion, it needs to lie to its people and keep them in the dark to preserve it. I grew up in communism and indeed there were people who were "more equal" than others, mostly those well connected with high positioned party members (if themselves weren't such party members). That allowed them much better living conditions than the regular "worker", they ate meat every day (yes, it may sound strange to the average reader of HN but meat wasn't something that we in the 80s in Eastern Europe had access to very often), had bread (for the rest of us it was rationed), soft toilet paper, jeans (I would have killed for a pair of jeans!), pepsi (no coca-cola tho) and a million little other things that people living in Western Europe in the 80s took for granted. But hey, most of us were "equal" in our poverty, so communism can't be that bad.