RE: Eastern Europe
Well, ok, you asked for it. Here’s my personal view on standard/quality of life in just one country: Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia the standard of living is surprisingly high and while there are deprived areas they are no worse than the slums of Birmingham or Liverpool. The reasons for the common misinterpretation of figures such as average wage and GDP are many-fold. Firstly, in Yugoslavia the national average wage is only calculated from the wages of state workers and the individuals who pay tax. The problem there is that many people who work for private companies or for their own business either don’t declare their entire earnings or don’t pay tax at all. Also, the problem of GDP is significant because the cost of living, even in Belgrade, is many times smaller than the cost of living in Barcelona. A packet of cigarettes for example would cost rouchly £0.60 – much cheaper than anywhere in Western Europe. From my own experience even the people who are poor aren’t that poor and manage a resonable quality of life. A family who rented a basement apartement in my home in Belgrade worked at the local market selling stationary for school kids but even they were able to all have mobile phones, drive a respectable car and take a holiday each year.
From what I have seen, the standard of living in Yugoslavia is pretty high and it is possible to even do quite well there – I for example plan to move back in the next few years.
The sad part of the story is that things are getting worse. Since the fall of Milosevic, wages have not singificanlty risen while the cost of food, accomodation, heating, electricity etc etc has more than doubled. There is now much more unemployment, benefits claims have increased and so on. Yugoslavia’s economy might be improving but it is undoubtedly at the cost of the quality of life in the country.
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