no wonder, considering how exactly that capitalism looked like, and how “well” people where with handling their finances.
Collapse of the USSR in terms of how destructive it was is comparable to the one of Roman Empire. It was litaral anarchy in the 90s.
Lots of people lost all their money they hoarded in a single moment, simply because just keeping the money hidden in a safe place was considered prime financial safety. And then lots of people lost their money again as they had no idea how to handle their finances properly, and people like Mavrodi emerged with their financial pyramid schemes, promising huge profits for all the investors.
tbf, USSR did great, especially considering that basically whole world pressured and opposed it in many ways. It still managed not only to persist, but also to help other countries. But comparing its economics to even all the combined economics of all the countries that were a part of it at the time is not fair, as USSR had in total more than 70 years to develop, and was occupying vast expances of land that had big cities, lots of fertile soil and just as much of any other resource. If you want to make a more fair comparison, you should compare it to EU.
Compared to other capitalist countries it was worse during Soviet times too. Average US life expectancy at the USSRs peak in 1986 was approx. 75 years old, whereas in the USSR the average is 5 years less… Quite substantial.
Also, where the Soviet Union fairly quickly seemed to plateau off with their life expectancy, the PRC managed to much more continuously trend upwards. Not necessarily faster than the SU at first (which makes sense), but they did manage to keep the momentum whereas the SU did not.
I mean, you did compare the US with the USSR, which is misguided because of what I highlighted. I agree the USSR made many mistakes we must learn from.
Japan’s life expectancy was even higher than most of those in the west.
Sure, plenty of developing capitalist nations had barely caught up at that point (e.g. South Korea). But they did manage to keep a positive trend going, whereas the SU had levelled off and wasn’t improving anymore.
You said “non-western”. I named two. If you want to shift goalposts further that’s fine but don’t act like you’re being all smart or anything.
Even for other developing countries the overall trend is clear: continuous rise in life expectancy, leveling off as it gets closer to 80. The SU plateaud just below 70 and remained there until its fall (after which it rose again). The vast majority of developing nations do not show this pattern of levelling off early.
Take Iran, or the Philippines, or even Vietnam (bar the civil war). All of them didn’t level off like the Soviets did. Same thing in other socialist countries like Cuba and the PRC.
It indicates a fairly severe mismanagement that the Soviet Union is one of the very, very few countries that managed to keep their life expectancy at 67-68 for over 20 years, when other countries kept rising and a good number had already surpassed them. Only after the year 2000 did they manage a sustained growth in life expectancy, rising to 73 after dropping to 64 (likely levelling off a little now due to the war in Ukraine).
The argument was that under the Soviet Union life was better. That may have been true when compared directly to the very tumultuous fall that directly followed. But the reality is that growth of life expectancy had completely stagnated in Soviet Union (it was even declining very slightly). It only started rising again after Russia had mostly stabilised post-fall, and is now higher than it’s ever been.
Imagine trying to paint “correctly pointing out that Japan and SK are not remotely representative of the developing world in general” as “moving the goal post”. My god, it is so obvious you people just parrot these phrases after seeing them on Reddit and thinking that they’re magic incantations that make you “win” an argument.
That’s not how you phrased your comment. Try being clearer in your phrasing.
Also try responding to the rest of the contents of my reply instead of deflecting by saying “reddit dumb” and thinking that’s winning an argument. I very clearly demonstrated that a wide variety of developing nations did not show the same stagnation in life expectancy that the SU did.
Not the biggest fan of the USSR - but compared to the capitalism that followed, yeah, they were
no wonder, considering how exactly that capitalism looked like, and how “well” people where with handling their finances.
Collapse of the USSR in terms of how destructive it was is comparable to the one of Roman Empire. It was litaral anarchy in the 90s.
Lots of people lost all their money they hoarded in a single moment, simply because just keeping the money hidden in a safe place was considered prime financial safety. And then lots of people lost their money again as they had no idea how to handle their finances properly, and people like Mavrodi emerged with their financial pyramid schemes, promising huge profits for all the investors.
tbf, USSR did great, especially considering that basically whole world pressured and opposed it in many ways. It still managed not only to persist, but also to help other countries. But comparing its economics to even all the combined economics of all the countries that were a part of it at the time is not fair, as USSR had in total more than 70 years to develop, and was occupying vast expances of land that had big cities, lots of fertile soil and just as much of any other resource. If you want to make a more fair comparison, you should compare it to EU.
Compared to other capitalist countries it was worse during Soviet times too. Average US life expectancy at the USSRs peak in 1986 was approx. 75 years old, whereas in the USSR the average is 5 years less… Quite substantial.
“A previously feudal society didn’t fully catch up to the biggest capitalist superpower! That means communism doesn’t work!”
Not what I said.
Also, where the Soviet Union fairly quickly seemed to plateau off with their life expectancy, the PRC managed to much more continuously trend upwards. Not necessarily faster than the SU at first (which makes sense), but they did manage to keep the momentum whereas the SU did not.
I mean, you did compare the US with the USSR, which is misguided because of what I highlighted. I agree the USSR made many mistakes we must learn from.
Your daily reminder that western liberals don’t think non western countries are real.
Japan’s life expectancy was even higher than most of those in the west.
Sure, plenty of developing capitalist nations had barely caught up at that point (e.g. South Korea). But they did manage to keep a positive trend going, whereas the SU had levelled off and wasn’t improving anymore.
That the only developing countries you can think of are Japan and SK very much demonstrates my point.
You said “non-western”. I named two. If you want to shift goalposts further that’s fine but don’t act like you’re being all smart or anything.
Even for other developing countries the overall trend is clear: continuous rise in life expectancy, leveling off as it gets closer to 80. The SU plateaud just below 70 and remained there until its fall (after which it rose again). The vast majority of developing nations do not show this pattern of levelling off early.
Take Iran, or the Philippines, or even Vietnam (bar the civil war). All of them didn’t level off like the Soviets did. Same thing in other socialist countries like Cuba and the PRC.
It indicates a fairly severe mismanagement that the Soviet Union is one of the very, very few countries that managed to keep their life expectancy at 67-68 for over 20 years, when other countries kept rising and a good number had already surpassed them. Only after the year 2000 did they manage a sustained growth in life expectancy, rising to 73 after dropping to 64 (likely levelling off a little now due to the war in Ukraine).
The argument was that under the Soviet Union life was better. That may have been true when compared directly to the very tumultuous fall that directly followed. But the reality is that growth of life expectancy had completely stagnated in Soviet Union (it was even declining very slightly). It only started rising again after Russia had mostly stabilised post-fall, and is now higher than it’s ever been.
Imagine trying to paint “correctly pointing out that Japan and SK are not remotely representative of the developing world in general” as “moving the goal post”. My god, it is so obvious you people just parrot these phrases after seeing them on Reddit and thinking that they’re magic incantations that make you “win” an argument.
That’s not how you phrased your comment. Try being clearer in your phrasing.
Also try responding to the rest of the contents of my reply instead of deflecting by saying “reddit dumb” and thinking that’s winning an argument. I very clearly demonstrated that a wide variety of developing nations did not show the same stagnation in life expectancy that the SU did.
Why would I bother with the rest of the comment when you’re already descending into bad faith reddit debatelord bullshit in the first paragraph?
No, you didn’t. You cherry picked a single digit number of outliers.