Out-of-touch Rich Man Chronicles: Michael Bloomberg equates a living wage to communism

[SergeyDovlatov]

17. Little choice there

Thank you for a thoughtful reply.

With respect to Sino-Soviet border war, it looked to me, though I might be biased, China was looking to alter the terms of the border agreement that was done during Tsar's times in 19th century. There were some negotiations, but by the 1960s there was a Sino-Soviet ideological split based on ideas of peaceful coexistance with captialist contries and condeming the Stalin's cult of personality by Kruschev. At some point China decided to capture the land it wanted by force, there were some fighting, both sides wisely de-escalated the conflict.

With respect to economic condititions during and immediately after perestroika. It was very bad, but, I don't think I can blame it on capitalism, there were none at that time, yet.

Almost everybody was on the government payroll, oil prices collapsed, a lot of inefficiencies in production, government decided to print money to fund the salaries, pensions, but the prices were rising faster than they can adjust the pensions.

USSR needed to switched to a model where there is a productive private sector it can tax and redistribute it, as opposed to run everything itself. The other model it tried for 70 years and it did not work out.