From: Ellen K. 

I was in the DDR (East Germany) in the 70's.  The people we stayed with
lived on the 5th floor.  Of course there was no elevator (no problem if
you're young and childless) -- at the time there were still many buildings
in the BRD (West Germany) which also only had stairs. However, there was
also one toilet for the entire floor, which didn't even have a pull chain,
you had to bring a bucket of water with you. There was a train track about
three blocks away and every time a train went by the whole building shook. 
(Speaking of trains, the trains still had curtains with Deutsche Reichsbahn
[the Nazi term for the German railroad] insignia.)  No such thing as toilet
paper, newspaper was used for that purpose.  Very little available in the
way of groceries in the stores -- bread, potatoes and cabbage were the only
items visible in abundance.   Yet the DDR was to the USSR at the time as
the BRD was to
the DDR -- Russians would try to buy the clothes off the backs of East
Germans who came to visit.

On Mon, 2 Jan 2006 13:47:20 +0100, "Phil Payne"
 wrote in message
:

>> That's the communist/socialist point of view though, "if all cannot be
>> equally successful, all must be equally unsuccessful." It's a
rip everyone
>> down to the lowest common denominator system -- a completely flawed point
>of
>> view as has been proven fruitless repeatedly... Yet one that the left
>> continues to embrace as they secretly pine for the resurrection of their
>> ideal model: the Soviet Union.
>
>Did you ever go to the Soviet Union?
>
>A friend of mine slipped on a stone staircase in Tashkent Airport.  She fell
>against a step and broke a tooth out of her jaw.  Blood everywhere.
>
>There were two white-coated first aiders then within a few minutes - the
>ambulance came within a quarter of an hour and she was on an operating table
>within the hour with a local anesthetic applied to the jaw and pretty
>serious surgery performed to fix the tooth.  From the look of the hospital
>and the people milling around pre and post treatment, we weren't in any way
>privileged - the peasants were getting the same treatment.
>
>I wonder how she'd have faired under your version of capitalism.
>

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