Growing up in Eastern Europe I had a romanticised picture of USA and I always wished I grew up there.
Only until years later I realised how privileged I was not having to worry about the student debt, medical insurance and gun violence...
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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It's true. Everything we were told would happen if we lost the Cold War happened anyway, done to us from within.
Most of it was already happening and only stopped because people were inspired by “The Reds” as they called them and started the labor movement.
Yes I’m sure the Soviet tenements were much more comfortable than the average American household.
Well the vast majority of citizens of former Soviet states sure preferred them to what they have now, but they were definitively more comfortable than the thousands of Hoovervilles we were building at the same time the Soviets were building those tenements. And infinitely more so than the thousands of Hoovervilles we have now.
“Thousands” of Hoovervilles?
Wanna post a source proving that’s a thing?
There’s dozens in every major city in the country, even at a time when police are constantly storming camps and trashing everything. There’s more in western states as they migrate west, but they’re all across the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tent_cities_in_the_United_States
There’s nearly 100 cities listed right there, and I can name nearly 100 more myself. There’s an estimated 300,000 unhoused people in the U.S., where do you think they sleep? Under the bridges, in industrial parks, up in national parks. Some are even visible from space! Go look in city subreddits, and see how many people complain about the issue of encampments.
And that’s less than the amount of people in the Soviet Union who lived in tenements? You think there was an option to do anything besides that in the USSR? You could rise out of that and own your own home?
And that’s not “thousands” either.
At best your list is, what, 50? You use an anecdote that you see tent cities? Well here’s mine, I don’t see more than one or two.
Tbh I’m done talking with you. You seem rather content to allow people to live in the streets, and that’s not the kind of person I want to waste my time with on this site. I’ll leave you with this though; do you think that these people living on the streets would rather live in a public housing project or in the shanty towns they have now? Do you think the Soviet citizens would rather have lived in Stalinkas, or in the burned out ruins of their cities? Soviet tenements were a response to millions of homeless and displaced people after a war that killed millions of their citizens and destroyed much of their resources. So what if their public housing was a little shitty, at least they had it. What’s the excuse for the US to have hundreds of thousands of its citizens living in the street?
Never said I was ok with homelessness. But making Soviet ghettos seem like puppies and rainbows isn’t the answer.
Show me somebody who does have an answer for homelessness. China doesn’t. There’s an estimated 3.5 million homeless Chinese, versus the estimated 582k Americans. How about 271k in the UK? Non governmental sources in modern day Russia estimate over 3 million homeless, and that’s with a constitutional right to shelter.
So target the US, but by population, the homelessness issue isn’t nearly as bad as other nations.
You are going a bit too far I think.
Don't be fooled by the propaganda, the tenement blocks you are referring to as "ghettos" are standing to this day, and they indeed, are comfortable. My partner's family lives in one. Since the abolishment of the soviet block, these were brought into half public half private domain. So you can just go and buy a flat in one. It's a lot cheaper than a freestanding house/flat in the city centre, but they remain in decent standards (at least some of them).
I'm not saying that everything is peachy in the Eastern Europe - quite the opposite. There is a lot of socio-political stuff I 100% don't agree with, economics are not in the best shape either. But given all this, I'm still glad I grew up there, rather in a place where I have to worry if I break my leg, will I be able to afford to go to hospital. Medical care and most of the necessary meds are free or subsidised so they are easily affordable. I don't have to worry about gun violence, because guns are mostly contained to the criminal underworld and they keep it that way. Because of that, the police force doesn't have to wear guns on the streets and they know how to defuse a situation without using lethal force. I went to college and got a degree, without worrying that I will have to pay off some exorbitant debt.
Best part is, country where I live and studied is not even my birthplace nor am I a citizen of this country. But still, free medical care and free education applies to me - beauty of the European Union.
Say what you want, I love where I live :)
You should consider taking your own advice about propaganda. My health insurance is cheap, six dollars a pay period, with a capped out of pocket expense. Not sure what that is off the top of my head, but not “bankrupting”.
The only gunshots I’ve heard in my life are ones I’ve fired myself.
The home that I bought two years ago is on par with the rent I was paying five years ago.
My five year college education was 35k with most of that offset by grants.
Your healthcare and education aren’t free. It’s subsidized by taxes that you pay. Which is fine, I think American taxes are much too low (for everybody). However, you have to look at what your government skips out on funding, name a military, seeing as the only thing standing between Ukraine and Russia is the massive amount of arms flowing in from the US.
When I say free, I obviously meant "at no extra cost". So doesn't matter if you are working, if you are a foreigner or any other situation - you need help, you receive it. No questions asked, no worries about the cost - people come together and everybody chip in.
Regarding the gun violence, USA is a big country. I know that thefts and rape are an issue in the area I stay - I never experienced it first handedly though. It doesn't mean it's not an existing problem.
But, not to drag this forever, it seems we both happy in the places we live in. Both have their good and bad sides, so let's just agree to disagree :D
If by average you mean the totality of every human being in America... have you driven through a city lately?
A roof over your head beats a tent that gets torn up once a month by cops
The fact that you think there are more homeless in the US than people who lived in soviet roach infested tenements shows how woefully uneducated you are
A roach-infested shithole is still inarguably better than living on the streets.
The percentage of the US population living in the streets is much smaller than that living in Soviet roach motels.
@BB69 the fact that you misrepresent what i said shows how much of a rhetorical demagogue you are
Says the person who is acting like the Soviet Union ghettos are even slightly comparable to a modern US city.
Stalin would’ve laughed and had you shipped to Siberia
Solid
That's why you should show up to protests armed. Either they leave your ass alone cuz they're afraid or they abolish 2nd amendment.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from history, it’s that the police will allow Nazis to strut around with rifles, threaten violence, and sometimes even actually enact violence, but as soon as minorities follow suit, they change the laws.
The largest successful gun control measure in the US was spearheaded by Governor Ronald Reagan in response to the Black Panther Community Policing efforts, which were widely successful in reducing police violence and false arrests in black communities in California. I’m all for what they call in The Grapes of Wrath “Turkey Shoots”, but just be aware that you can expect the rules to change as soon as you do if you’re part of a marginalized group.
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