re: #391 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

Yep, which is what ultimately brought down the USSR. They had spent decades shoveling billions yearly into defense spending, while the average Soviet had no access to more than the most basic of modern amenities. When the boys in the Kremlin started to notice that they were losing the ideological war due to the West’s wealth of consumer goods, they tried to match it by investing in such goods for the common man.

A decade later, the wall came tumblin’ down.

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve read about the East during the Cold War but I remember reading in How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed about how the crippling lack of consumer goods was a big reason why people grew dissatifised with Communism.