I asked this question a long, long time ago on reddit, but now I cant find it and also we’ve all matured and learned a lot since then, so id like to ask the question again.

I was also inspired to make this post after seeing an anarchist whine about socialist states teaching people how to read, saying “they keep in place the systems that make illiteracy a bad thing.” I obviously am not taking them seriously, but it did get me thinking.

Anyway, what i mean by the question is that poverty in non-socialist countries is dehabilitating, causes people to get diseased, both physically and mentally. It’s also extremely isolating and usually requires people work harder to actually remain alive.

But would this be the same in a socialist country? When people in pre-reform china were impoverished, what was their standard of living like compared to people making a similar income elsewhere? Yes technically they didn’t make that much money a day, but did they need money to have a home or food? If they were impoverished was it possible to get a job? What would the likely-hood of drug addiction be compared to impoverished people elsewhere. And how consistent did this remain throughout the reform period to today (obviously extreme poverty has been mostly eliminated in China today, but still).

This isn’t to say, in any case, reform and opening up was a bad policy. Even if the poor were somewhat happy, they (and china) were still poor, and the improvement in living standards from reform and opening up outweighs any theoretical and/or moralistic gain from poverty. However I am just curious. (This also goes for other countries like the DPRK to)