Enough about the bad, what was GOOD abot the Soviet Union?

[cthulu2016]

95. re: "no one starves"

Are we comparing the USSR to Somalia or to a first world nation?

A person was much liklier to starve in the USSR than in, say, the USA. In the Stalin era a person was liklier to starve in the USSR than pretty much anywhere else. In the post-Stalin era starvation as a specific cause of death was rare both places but malnutrition was far more common in the USSR.

The people were, for the most part, poor and miserable. The working middle class faced many everyday privations that we find only among the very poorest few here.

If I wanted to compare the lot of people at the bottom I'd be more comfortable talking about Cuba than the USSR. The USSR was a very bad place full of very unhappy people. Nothing to emulate.

The question of whether some people were better off then than they are today is another matter. Some probably were. If someone wanted to argue that living in a post-apocalyptic sort of decaying gangster state is worse than the USSR there may be an argument to be made. I wouldn't suggest either system.