I just know word-of-mouth impressions from talking to people in Russia. From such things I gather that people were very unhappy with the policy (the Soviet policy, that is -- I don't know anything about how Cuba works) of establishing a flat pay ceiling. Nobody in the USSR was earning a lot of money, unless you were really, really high up in the elite or a criminal. And naturally, people who thought they were doing a good job/were more talented/smarter/more committed or in some other sense more deserving than other people were upset that they were earning approximately the same as Lazy Alcoholic Joe who always comes into work an hour late and spends half his day sleeping off his hangover in the storeroom. And every enterprise had a Lazy Alcoholic Joe.
--- On Fri, 6/13/08, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> From: Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Cuba to abandon salary equality
> To: "LBO-Talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Friday, June 13, 2008, 5:37 PM
> ============================
> Lots of discussion about this on Lou Proyect's list. Be
> interested to hear
> more on the unpopularity of the system in the USSR. My
> take: Cuba is being
> forced to follow the path taken by the Soviets, Chinese,
> and others who
> abolished and then restored capitalism:
>
> http://www.marxmail.org/msg42977.html
>
> http://www.marxmail.org/msg42945.html
>
>
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