Comments by "N Velsen" (@nvelsen1975) on "How Oil Ate the Soviet Economy" video.

@WingofTech Naah, in the Soviet Union wages were nearly the same. Dangerous academic work away from home, you'd make maybe 20% more than a guy doing a simply menial job. The real reward was in the perks and chances to steal stuff, which everybody did. For example you could be allowed to buy a car, or a holiday home without having to pour thousands of manhours into free work for the Party. Medals obviously like was mentioned. But a better posting also meant more opportunities to take stuff for yourself. A guy working in a factory probably can't steal more than replacement lightbulbs for his home, but at a higher posting you might be able to lay your hands on all kinds of stuff other people couldn't get. Like order up some child-size wintercoats 'for my latest expedition' for the kids. Save your wife 6 hours of queuing up at the clothes stores and save money.
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But that wasn't just a Soviet thing. Dutch farmers used to grow cheap vegetables like paprikas in winter in single-pane glass greenhouses that leak heat like crazy. (5,5 watts per m² per hour) Why? Cheap subsidised gas for millionaire farmers..... And currently we're paying through our teeth for heating and power because all our gas was wasted on millionaire farmers back then, so giving Putin and his sick war of extermination the finger, has resulted in a pretty significant price tag. A price we pay happily, but we didn't NEED to if we hadn't let the farmers waste it all earlier on.
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@justrl3k Yeah I have some issues feeling sympathy for people who make € 249K net profit per person per year AND still get subsidies, while the median wage is somewhere 36K, of which people now get to hand over a quarter or a third to energy bills. Especially if our houses are hugely expensive, while the less than 1% of the population that's a farmer, controls 50% of the land, while 99% of the population lives in the 8% of the country that consists of houses, offices and factories. If farmers shrink by 20%, we can double the amount of houses we have and go from an extreme shortage to a surplus of 2-3 million houses. But the farmers' lobby is blocking that. Their latest plan consists of blocking the army from modernising, because the site chosen that will create 1200 jobs, contains the farms of eight multi-millionaires who create zero jobs. (farmers don't create jobs, they hire illegals and migrant workers that they pay beneath the minimum wage)
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@katiebarber407 Prof D. Turnock 'East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union' and Dr L Paul en Dr B de Pater 'Midden- en Oost-Europa' As well as several guest lecturers who did business in the former ussr and former Russian-occupied countries. Everybody who studied the subject seriously at university knows this sort of thing. Much to the chagrin of sheltered children who fancy themselves socialists and tend to screech 'But but but this American also once did a thing, long ago!' whenever their failed genocidal ideology is discussed negatively.
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