Among other things, universal employment shown to do the same as no employment: a lot of people binge drinking and not caring to do anything useful with their life. Work ethic problems surfaced in a bad way.
Drinking got so bad in the US that the government have to set a prohibition on it. Before prohibition, was the US in no employment or universal employment?
I don't think there's a strong relationship to this, and the Soviet alcoholism came from something else -- maybe losing many family members or having been shipped far away from everyone you know by a totalitarian government.
Or, the soviets never had a prohibition to change up what people drink
Almost none of working age Soviet people of early 80s had personal experience of losing a family member or being shipped away, yet they drank like sailors permanently stuck in a port.
This is mostly due to the blandness of life, and partly due to almost absent survival-related risk and stress. Your income and housing is guaranteed, even if often crappy and small. Why bother?
I've met people in their 20s in the 2010s who are still traumatized by the actions of the Soviet government.
The trauma is passed down over time, but the alcoholism even more so. Alcoholic parents are gonna have a lot of alcohol around the house available for teens to party and drink with, to develop a habit and dependence
> The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people.
This is just false.
In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69 years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1].
In the USSR, "In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census data, the literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, making a total literacy rate of 75%"[2].
The USSR was also the first country in the world to legalize abortion, and it championed gender equality. In the meantime the US is going in the direction of banning abortion once again.
I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the people"?
> In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69 years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1].
What a nonsensical comparison. Lol.
> I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the people"?
Probably talking about the fact that the situation got so bad Gorbachev initiated such major reforms that the USSR collapsed. No biggie. Lol.
> Probably talking about the fact that the situation got so bad Gorbachev initiated such major reforms that the USSR collapsed. No biggie. Lol.
Not really answering my question here, just making some pointless humor.
Curious how all primary metrics for the population fell after the USSR got dissolved by Gorbachev. It's not a mistery that 70% of Russians approve Stalin anyway, guess they're still brainwashed after so many years, right?
Late Soviet communities mostly ran themselves within the existing law/power frameworks. Soviet society indeed had comparatively little regard for the conditions of people, but it is more of a cultural problem, and not an unique one.
Among other things, universal employment shown to do the same as no employment: a lot of people binge drinking and not caring to do anything useful with their life. Work ethic problems surfaced in a bad way.