The devastating failure of communism - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15149918
We do get the occasional poster reveling in communist nostalgia or the kid who believes s/he found the holy grail of political systems in communism. They will usually go on about how communism raised people from a primitive or impoverished state and how public infrastructure, the educational system or the health system were so much better under communism.

Yet, nobody is able to counter these facts:

Image

While life expectancy steadily increased in Western Europe, it virtually stagnated in the dictatorships of Eastern and Central Europe under communist rule. Life-expectancy only improved after the overthrow of the communist regimes.
#15149920
Atlantis wrote:We do get the occasional poster reveling in communist nostalgia or the kid who believes s/he found the holy grail of political systems in communism. They will usually go on about how communism raised people from a primitive or impoverished state and how public infrastructure, the educational system or the health system were so much better under communism.

Yet, nobody is able to counter these facts:

Image

While life expectancy steadily increased in Western Europe, it virtually stagnated in the dictatorships of Eastern and Central Europe under communist rule. Life-expectancy only improved after the overthrow of the communist regimes.


Not that I am a huge fan of communism but the graph needs to start pre-WW2 and not in 1960s.

As for the average life expectancy being lower, well the communists lost the cold war which set back the former communist countries by couple of decades. (The non-communist countries had a head start)
#15149921
It's quite important in those graphs to have Germany (as both FRG and GDR). For everything else it can be said that Eastern Europe is lower because of Mongols, that Slavs are untermensch, that Northern Korea is mostly mountainous and South Korea is mostly plains. Germany is the only clean sample (to some degree; FRG was still money-pumped by the US).
#15149923
JohnRawls wrote:1) Not that I am a huge fan of communism but the graph needs to start pre-WW2 and not in 1960s.

2) As for the average life expectancy being lower, well the communists lost the cold war which set back the former communist countries by couple of decades. (The non-communist countries had a head start)


Sorry John, but that doesn't make sense.

1) After WWII, communist regimes gradually consolidated during the 50s and 60s. That's the time-frame communist influence on life-expectancy should start.

2) Life-expectancy increased after the communist regimes were toppled. It increased because "communists lost the cold war" and the "non-communist countries had a head start" because of the failure of communism.

Thus, exactly as I said.
#15150029
JohnRawls wrote:As for the average life expectancy being lower, well the communists lost the cold war which set back the former communist countries by couple of decades. (The non-communist countries had a head start)

Look at the graph. The life expectancy flatlined from the 60's and 70's until the end of the USSR. After the USSR dissolved it took off at a rate the same as the western european countries.
#15150212
Communism was the best thing to ever happen to capitalism, without it, capitalism would have been abandoned decades ago. If capitalism couldn't sell itself as the only effective bulwark against the horors of red fascism very few people would be willing to accept the extreme disparities of wealth and power it inevitably produces.
#15150216
ingliz wrote:The devastating failure of capitalism...

The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% of individuals in the US is 14.6 years and increasing.


:)


There is no equality.
The importance thing is to raise those below.
#15150217
The problem with the Soviet government is that it was a command economy. Which is also what killed it. In a capitalist economy, when there is an economic crisis, millions of people make millions of adjustment to adapt to it. A command economy is just a bunch of bureaucrats, and by the time they react to a crisis, sometimes it's going to be too late.

Please note that I didn't call it communist.
#15150223
late wrote:The problem with the Soviet government is that it was a command economy. Which is also what killed it. In a capitalist economy, when there is an economic crisis, millions of people make millions of adjustment to adapt to it. A command economy is just a bunch of bureaucrats, and by the time they react to a crisis, sometimes it's going to be too late.

Please note that I didn't call it communist.


China has a system of state-directed capitalism which has been quite successful so far.

The command economy had obvious faults, but it could have been made to work with a system of enlightened government.

The main problem is corruption and non-transparency. The Soviet leaders like today's Chinese leaders had to do everything to suppress dissension. Without the means for criticizing bad policies by independent organs such as the media, every regime will fail sooner or later.

To try and cover up failure is inherent in human nature.
#15150228
Agent Steel wrote:I don't think any of those countries were communist.

True communism is an Utopia that does not exist. It is like heaven or nirvana. In the end it is just another religion.
#15150229
It looks like US style monopoly capitalism is just as bad for life-expectancy as the former communist regimes in Europe.

US life-expectancy just dropped to below that of Poland which is still trying to overcome the devastating inheritance of its communist past.

European Social Democracy and the Social Market Economy achieve the highest life-expectancy.

US life expectancy drops dramatically due to COVID-19

U.S. life expectancy just dropped by more than a year — the largest decline in decades — as a result of the sheer number of deaths from COVID-19, according to estimates from a new study.

The study researchers project that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average U.S. life expectancy in 2020 will drop by 1.13 years, bringing it to 77.48 years, according to the study, published Thursday (Jan. 14) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That's the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in at least 40 years, and it would bring the country's life expectancy down its lowest level since 2003, the researchers said.

Life expectancy in the U.S. rarely declines, and when it does, it makes headlines. Most recently, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.1 years in 2015, 2016 and 2017 — a trend that was attributed to rises in "deaths of despair," including drug overdose and suicide. The new estimated decline due to COVID-19 is 10 times greater.

What's more, the study showed even larger declines in 2020 among Black and Latino communities, which have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Overall, nearly 400,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., according to the Johns Hopkins virus dashboard.

The study projected life expectancy for Black people will drop by 2.1 years, to 72.78 years, and life expectancy for Latino people will drop by 3.05 years, to 78.77 years. In contrast, the life expectancy for white people is projected to decline by 0.68 years to 77.84 years.

"Our study analyzes the effect of this exceptional number of deaths on life expectancy for the entire nation, as well as the consequences for marginalized groups," study co-author Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, said in a statement. "The COVID-19 pandemic's disproportionate effect on the life expectancy of Black and Latino Americans likely has to do with their greater exposure through their workplace or extended family contacts, in addition to receiving poorer health care, leading to more infections and worse outcomes."

The researchers estimated U.S. life expectancy at birth using four scenarios — one in which the COVID-19 pandemic didn't happen, and three scenarios that used COVID-19 death projections for 2020 from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

The larger reductions in life expectancy for Black and Latino populations was in part due to "a disproportionate number of deaths at younger ages for these groups," study co-author Noreen Goldman, a professor of demography and public affairs at Princeton University, said in the statement. "These findings underscore the need for protective behaviors and programs to reduce potential viral exposure among younger individuals who may not perceive themselves to be at high risk."

It's important to note that life expectancy at birth is an estimate of how long a population of people would live if they were to experience the death rates seen in a given period (in this case, in 2020), the authors said.

Although COVID-19 vaccines may significantly reduce transmission this year, the researchers don't anticipate life expectancy to immediately bounce back in 2021.

"While the arrival of effective vaccines is hopeful, the U.S. is currently experiencing more daily COVID-19 deaths than at any other point in the pandemic," Andrasfay said. "Because of that, and because we expect there will be long-term health and economic effects that may result in worse mortality for many years to come, we expect there will be lingering effects on life expectancy in 2021."


@Sivad said that Covid-19 was just like the flu. What he didn't tell us was that, without containment measures, it would have been more deadly than the Spanish flu.
#15150244
Sivad wrote:No I didn't.


Yes you did. In innumerable posts you have tried to downplay the danger of the pandemic and tried to undermine containment measures.

Collectively with all the other pandemic deniers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdown fanatics, you have blood on your hands.
#15150256
Atlantis wrote:Yes you did. In innumerable posts you have tried to downplay the danger of the pandemic and tried to undermine containment measures.


No, that's just how you're MSM addled mind processed it. Your thinking is stunted and your perception is warped from all the bullshit you consume. I would say your MSM head might clear up if you laid off the corporate media a little but I'm pretty sure you're a terminal case.
#15150277
Interesting that Russia isn't in the graph. The place where rapid neo-liberalization drastically decreased life expectancy and 90% of the country had to resort to personal cultivation to survive while the Western-backed puppets plundered and raped the country.

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