• CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    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…

    • Xariphon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s true. Everything we were told would happen if we lost the Cold War happened anyway, done to us from within.

      • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tfOP
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • BB69@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes I’m sure the Soviet tenements were much more comfortable than the average American household.

      • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tfOP
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • BB69@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “Thousands” of Hoovervilles?

          Wanna post a source proving that’s a thing?

          • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tfOP
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • BB69@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tfOP
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                1 year ago

                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?

                • BB69@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

                  • CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    1 year ago

                    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 :)