The conversations are amazing
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Remember that "Grapes of Wrath" completely backfired as a propaganda piece because Russians were amazed that poor Americans could still afford cars
What do you mean propaganda piece? Stienbeck didn't write that for Americans to read?
Just a bit of context as someone from Eastern Europe - it was not that people couldn't afford cars, it was that they were in short supply. People - fewer people than in the West, but still a lot of people - bought cars, they just got them 30 years after the fact.
That's not how I remember it. The average persin in Eastern Europe couldn't afford to buy a car and cars were in short supply, resulting in significant waiting periods (we're talking years). The average citizens in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had much less purchaisng power compared to their counterparts in the West. Soviet-made cars were much more expensice relative to Western-made ones, and of considerably lower quality, generally speaking.
Oh, you're right, I guess on the one hand I'm from the happiest barracks so to speak, but what I meant to say that there it wasn't uncommon to know people with cars, it wasn't some "you have to be a politician or CEO equivalent" thing, more like a "most people don't have one, but they do know someone who has one".
TBH it feels like it was similar than trying to save up for a house from zero for young people now. It's not entirely unrealistic, but the average person won't get there.
The peeps I know were teachers and they did own a car, the same car over 30 years though. There were no traffic jams though.
Having a Western car though, that was the real shit. I knew someone who had a VW Golf in the 80s, now for that you had to be high in the pecking order.