[WS:] The quality of goods is tricky business. A big chunk of the US economy is housing - which is not only of extremely crappy quality by European standards - basically plywood covered with plastic siding which would not pass even for a barn in Europe - but also extremely wasteful and requiring constant servicing. Likewise, a big chunk of the US GDP is wasted on combating the vices created by the very organization of economy and society (from crime to crime prevention and fundamental inefficiency of most domestic services). Yet, few hold that crappiness and inefficiency against the US economy.
Another point - AFAIK, the problems in central planning became known since 1952 and let to reform attempts in 1956 - far earlier than your posting stipulates.
Wojtek
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 5:22 PM, James Heartfield < Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Chris Doss writes: The Soviet economy was growing under Brezhnev
>
> Statistics are deceptive on this since nominal growth in output fails to
> register the poor quality of the goods being produced (to the point where
> even newly made goods needed to be repaired, and much of output was simply
> useless). The economy's failures were (within the constricted terms that
> anything was debated) widely recognised since at least 1977, and stagnation
> was first named, not under Gorbachov, but Andropov, and by economists like
> Fi'lev and Zaslavskaya recognised as a systemic failure.
>
> By the early eighties, everyone knew that the Soviet Union was royally
> fucked. You can't get away with pretending that Gorbachov and Yeltsin
> somehow magicked away the fantastic success that the USSR was - they no
> doubt played their hands badly, but the hand they were dealt by those that
> preceded them was truly pathetic. In truth, the problems in the Soviet
> economy were already deeply embedded under Stalin's 'command' economy, whose
> pisspoor organisation was even less responsive to demand than the market.
>
> There is a reason that the USSR lost the Cold War.
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