Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Food Lines Stretching For Blocks All Over US" video.

@Britain W You're being disingenuous. People are in line for a helping hand. The Soviet "bread line" was a consequence of constant production shortages (which means first-come-first-serve), stores in cities like Moscow having greater supply so people traveled far to concentrate in the same spot, and the artificial job creation from having separate lines for products and cashiers.
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@pdpgb "How is that any different from a bread line?" - In the political context, "bread line" refers to the USSR's chronic inability to produce enough and distribute it properly. If anything, I've heard of producers having trouble because they're producing more than enough but many businesses are shut down so they can't even offload what they produce.
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@pdpgb Nah, there were lines for high-demand goods even if you could afford it. We associate the bread line with extreme poverty but the reason the expression caught on and became culturally relevant was because there were queue lines even during the good times. When Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to curb alcoholism the state put restrictions on sale of hard liquor and the time of day you could purchase it so lines formed for alcohol as well, not just food. Waiting in line happened even for books. Lines formed at the stores because the government fixed the prices (hiding inflation). People who produced food independently were able to sell it at local markets but there the prices were higher due to inflation, so it was always preferable to get your groceries at the store with regulated prices. Even during the good times, when there's no famine at all, it was preferable to take your chance at waiting in line as you'd spend less money on food and this normalized a behavior that you'd only see in times of crisis. The poor allocation of resources causing some areas to have extra stock while others had shortages, plus corruption at the distributor level diverting products towards the "grey market", had the compounding effect of people travelling farther to go to stores. This "extends" the cultural memory of standing in line for food because it happened even when people weren't facing extreme poverty. "But I don't see any problem with the concept in general. Sure it's better if they don't have to wait in line too long but we're giving food to hungry people." - The problem isn't "you have to wait for food". That's not the critique. It's how poorly managed production was in the Soviet Union. It's not a bad thing to have charity in times of hardship, the problem is when the hardship was caused by the state's own incompetence and now your survival depends on charity.
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