"As we know, this eventually hurt the Soviet bloc more than the Western bloc and led to the fall of communism in the late 1980s." You are welcome to have your own opinions, but not your own history :)
The Soviets had structural problems (governance, national spirit, economic) which started causing real problems in the 1960s. For example, there were 2 rubles: one that circulated between factories, retail, and workers, and a different ruble that circulated between government agencies and factories. There was no convertibility between the two rubles. "Retail" rubles were subject to market forces (you don't pay the workers enough, they don't show up), but the "wholesale" ruble was basically a market in political influence and pricing made no sense to outsiders. The "wholesale" ruble drifted away from reality and this caused a lot of "big business" management problems.
No doubt about that. Of course it hurt the Warsaw Pact more and of course we won the Cold War. But it cost us in many ways like massive deficits and government debt and reduction of growth. And I think there are better ways to counter the Chinese threat as I have argued here: https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/how-should-we-deal-with-chinas-industrial
But I completely agree there are different opinions and we just happen to disagree which way is best. And that is perfectly alright and what makes the economy fun 😃
"As we know, this eventually hurt the Soviet bloc more than the Western bloc and led to the fall of communism in the late 1980s." You are welcome to have your own opinions, but not your own history :)
The Soviets had structural problems (governance, national spirit, economic) which started causing real problems in the 1960s. For example, there were 2 rubles: one that circulated between factories, retail, and workers, and a different ruble that circulated between government agencies and factories. There was no convertibility between the two rubles. "Retail" rubles were subject to market forces (you don't pay the workers enough, they don't show up), but the "wholesale" ruble was basically a market in political influence and pricing made no sense to outsiders. The "wholesale" ruble drifted away from reality and this caused a lot of "big business" management problems.
No doubt about that. Of course it hurt the Warsaw Pact more and of course we won the Cold War. But it cost us in many ways like massive deficits and government debt and reduction of growth. And I think there are better ways to counter the Chinese threat as I have argued here: https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/how-should-we-deal-with-chinas-industrial
But I completely agree there are different opinions and we just happen to disagree which way is best. And that is perfectly alright and what makes the economy fun 😃