Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 05, 2025, 09:19 PMAnd now asshole, the ratio here is 500 to one.

I was specific about the method used to calculate how the choice was made K-Dog.

It was not related to the wages of workers. I said "living standards".  Feel free to attack someone else's metric, but you didn't attack mine. Feel free to get faux offended at your strawman.

While your claims of how great the USSR was are nice...there was a reason why defections tended to be a one way street.  Someone let me know how many US hospitals lack hot water...and we can factor that in to the care one might receive in a Soviet style system versus the admitting expensive, and top notch, US one.

QuoteDespite a doubling in the number of hospital beds and doctors per capita between 1950 and 1980, the lack of money that had been going into health was patently obvious. Some of the smaller hospitals had no radiology services, and a few had inadequate heating or water. A 1989 survey found that 20% of Russian hospitals did not have piped hot water and 3% did not even have piped cold water. 7% did not have a telephone. 17% lacked adequate sanitation facilities. Every seventh hospital and polyclinic needed basic reconstruction.

As a quick aside, I've noted the dichotomy between American good communists like you and the personal wealth you bring to the table obtained in a capitalist system, but unwavering support for a system that most certainly wouldn't even have provided you with the KITCHEN in your current abode seems a bit...incongruous.

Are these just straight up personal biases coming out vis-a-vis political leanings, that are so powerful as to cause you to lean into the "good old days" of hospitals without running water and lousy kitchens?  But at least the homeless weren't sleeping in the streets...them and the undesirables probably really enjoyed feather filled mattresses and 3 hots a day in the gulags. The Soviet solution to the American homeless situation might not have the appeal you think it does to those homeless and undesireables.