Reply #186: Yes, look at what the people have lost

[midlife_mo_Jo]

Under the communist government -

Shabby hospitals and severe shortage of medicines, treatments, technology, etc.

Fucked up centralized control of everything. Bread lines and shortages of food staples. Shortages of common goods like shoes.

A so-called middle class that was so poor many folks couldn't afford a new pair of shoes but every few years.

Such severe shortages of housing that it was COMMON for several people to squeeze into tiny, tiny apartments. (I've seen these apartments. Ask me about them. I've been to Russia and Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia. Most of them - old, decrepit, poorly maintained made our military baracks look like they were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.)

Houses in the countryside were generally decrepit, and some were nothing more than shacks with outhouses. Think Appalachia. (Don't we rail against that kind of poverty?)

(Sure, by the time I saw this housing, the "wall" had fallen, but this is how people lived under the previous system. )

Leaders that condemned many people to gulags, and other people to horrible asylums with few rights to defend themselves.

Higher education only to those who professed allegiance to the leading party.

No civil rights.

Secret prisons.

NO DEMOCRACY.

Living in fear.

Yeah, the far left looks pretty damn scary to me, too.

And this article on the housing shortage in Cuba is...umm....interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/americas/31cuba.html