>
> For me, to say that you don't produce any consumer goods worth having is just to say that you don't produce anything worth having. And then, with this understanding, which I still somehow believe to be correct, it shocks me somehow to hear someone going on about weapons exports and then to ask what is so important about consumer goods. Now that is so very SU, isn't it?
>
> Tahir
>
I was referring to fancy electronic doodads, high-speed washing machines, wide-screen color TVs (which the USSR may have had -- I don't remember?). Luxury goods.
As an aside, my Soviet washing machine's only drawback is that youhave to keep an eye on the tap while you're manually filling it so it doesn't overflow, and you have to repeat the process manually at each point of the cycle. All in all this adds maybe 15 minutes to the labor times with respect to a 2004 US washing machine. Oh, the horror. Actually I would say that the consumer goods produced in the USSR in the 70s and 80s were about equivalent in quality to those produced in the West in the 50s. Not bad for a country in which, in 1924, most people had never seen a toilet. As I said in a previous post, life in the USSR was VERY Hooneymooners. That apartment is uebersoviet.
I don't know what "very SU" means. Probably "very like my stereotype of the SU."