[Lando Lincoln]

Lando

[Kozak]

In 1982, Dr. Seweryn Bialer, a Sovietologist from Columbia University, proclaimed, "The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systematic crisis."

Later that same year, historian Arthur Schlessinger, Jr. indicated that "those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse (are) wishful thinkers." Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger insisted that "the Soviet system will not collapse."

John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished Harvard economist, wrote in l984: ¡§That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene„mOne sees it in the appearance of solid well-being of the people on the streets„mand the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops„mPartly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.¡¨

Equally imaginative was the assessment of Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the l985 edition of his widely-used textbook. ¡§What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth„mThe Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth.¡¨

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, another MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as l989, wrote, ¡§Can economic command significantly„maccelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can„mToday the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States.¡¨

Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Reagan¡¦s policies. Strobe Talbott faulted the Reagan administration for espousing ¡§the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,¡¨ an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic. ¡§Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end,¡¨ Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind ¡§it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live.¡¨

Yeah those brilliant liberal intellectuals sure called it.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

My favorite counter-example to the praise that these wayward economists were heaping on the centrally planned economy of the soviet union was something which appeared in The New York Times during the final months of the evil empire. Foreign goods which had not been able to get onto the black market in prior years were beginning to appear in Moscow in September of 1991 and the Times reporter sampled items and tried to place their price in context of other goods and services then available under central planning. What I will remember for the rest of my life was the comparison of two vastly different things - milk and air travel. The reported indicated that on the black market you could buy 5 quarts of Finnish milk for the same price as the cost of a round trip flight from Moscow to Vladivostok (12 time zones to the east). The brilliance of the communist centrally planned economy.

[lainde]

bttt

[GoLightly]

Great read Lando!!

[Old Professer]

The first sign of wellnes is annoyance.

[tubebender]

This Doc sounds just like my Family GP. We have a great relationship and evry time he sees me waiting for a BP check he gives me a thumb's up.

In the late seventies I saw interest rates in the teens, credit card rates at 22 % and inflation at about 18% per year. I made lots of funny money by buying trailer loads at the first of the year and watching three price increases a year on those goods. Of course all I was doing was keeping even