[lbo-talk] 20 years after

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 5 05:36:17 PST 2009


It it's been 20 years since the "fall of communism" and "democratic reform" in Eastern Europe - enough time to do some historical comparisons. The specific question that is on my mind is this:

What is the net gain in economic development and standards of living of the vast majority (bottom 80%) of the population during those twenty years as compared to similar gains during the twenty year period after the 1917 revolution (Russia) or the end of WW2 (Eastern Europe)?

It is my impression that the first 20 years of this democratic nonsense pale in comparison to the first 20 years of communism. Of course backing that with data is rather difficult because national accounting system used to calculate the GDP is not compatible with material production accounting used under communism, and standards of living measures are not readily available either. I do not have time to do research in this area, but perhaps someone has some of these figures handy. Any thoughts?

Wojtek Sokolowski Maryland



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