> The Soviet Union (and its colonies like East Germany) never came anywhere close to providing anywhere near the quality of life that the West provided Kennedy

> The Soviet Union (and its colonies like East Germany) never came anywhere close to providing anywhere near the quality of life that the West provided Kennedy administration thought otherwise. Their internal memos say that they saw USSR industrializing too rapidly and raising life standards of its people and this being dangerous in that other countries could pick up the same model, resulting in a 'domino effect'. Which is the origin of the 'domino theory' and the Vietnam war and all the wars that followed it. Along with the arms and space race plan that Kennedy administration started to starve the USSR out of GDP in 1960s. The capitalist system in the us NEVER provided everything that the Soviet system provided to its citizens. At the peak of American prosperity, there were blacks and minorities from the 'undesirable' groups suffering poverty, discrimination and actual apartheid. Whereas every Soviet citizen was entitled to every single creature comfort that was available in 1960s. But even today, a white collar couple in well paid white collar jobs, have to work for 40 years straight to get and keep all the comforts and benefits that socialist countries' citizens had been entitled to from birth. From housing to cars to guaranteed employment to paid vacations, maternity leave, reasonable retirement to entertainment. Today even retirement is a thing of the past in the US as people see that the workaround that has been the 401ks may be shaky. http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/ http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/ The 'success' of the system in the West was mainly built on propaganda: Soviet intelligence, propaganda ministries were never able to convince their people that behind the gilded and luxurious lifestyles from 5th avenue and manhattan that were being portrayed in the American movies, you encountered people sleeping in cardboard boxes if you just go two streets up the block. Even today, many Russians still don't believe that there are homeless in the US even as ~30 million people are calculated to be effectively homeless, ~3 million chronically homeless. And its not coincidence. Its by design. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/operation-tinseltown-how-the-cia-manipulates-hollywood/491138/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/op...