It's also an example of how fucked up it was for many in the USSR if a washing machine and food in a grocery store seemed like propaganda. They had TV's though.
A good example would be Viktor Belenko, a pilot in the USSR air force, who did the math on the military technology that the US put out and came to the conclusion that they must have much more overall resources than the Soviet Union.
So in 1976 he defected in a top-secret MiG that he intended to use as a bargaining chip, I think the movie Firefox is loosely based on his escape, anyway it worked and he got entry into the US via Japan.
The CIA and military took the plane and interrogated him, after some time he was free to move around while escorted by a couple of CIA dudes. Soon after that he found himself in a super market, aisle after aisle of food and snacks, and he started to feel doubt. Surely this store was just something the Americans had staged for him to see, American propaganda, it couldn't actually be like that all over America. And he was smart enough to figure out that the US had to have more stuff than the USSR, including food, but he couldn't imagine it would be like that.
He later bought cat food by accident and ate it on crackers, his opinion of American cat food was that it was better than a lot of Soviet canned food.
So maybe the Reds aren't the best judges of wealth and prosperity, at the time any western nation would seem like outrageous propaganda to their common man.
You left out the best part:
After being taken to a CIA safehouse in the Virigina backwoods, Belenko's CIA handlers took him clothes shopping since he had one change of clothes.
Some quick context: Belenko was not just a fighter pilot, but one of their top-tier pilots (having been allowed to fly their latest top-secret fighters) and a Party member- this put him near the top of Russian society. He was living better than 99.9% of Russians, and the CIA knew this. Remember that as we continue.
Belenko was taken to a clothing store in a nearby small town. Belenko was completely flabbergasted at the selection - he'd never seen so many options for clothing, and he couldn't believe it was out for customers to look at, you actually picked out the things you wanted, they weren't given to you by the store owner. And besides the selection, he couldn't believe the quality of the clothing, he'd never seen such well-made clothes from such high quality cloth.
He was assured that this was just a normal American store. Belenko didn't believe this, he believed that he was taken to a "propaganda town", like the USSR had, where everything was was just a production to impress visitor; The shops were only for the elites of American society, CIA and their families, because he decided that was the only possible way such a store could exist.
He kept asking the CIA handlers questions about the selection of clothes the store carried and if this was you'd find in other stories in America, he was trying to get them to trip up and admit that this was a sham store made to impress him & other defectors.
They assured him this was just to get him a few changes of clothes for the next few days; they'd take him to nicer store with a bigger selection of better clothes next week. The CIA handlers thought that as one of the upper-crust in Russia, all the questions meant he was unhappy with the small store's limited selection.
A clothing store in small town Virginia in the 80's was better than what one of the most well-off, well-respected members of Soviet society (outside of the government) could get access to.
This is why no one with a brain wants socialism.
Also it's pure entitled projection when Millenials start whining about Baby Boomers and previous generations being handed everything on a golden platter, most of them worked for 50 years in a factory to pay off the few assets they were able to acquire and then dropped dead. Luxury high ticket items just flow through peoples hands like water nowadays, old post-war Workin' Joe had to scrimp and save and spend years and years paying off the few things they aspired to own like a car, TV or washing machine or whatever, their ideas of how people used to live are just pure fantasy.
The average cell-phone bill is something like $80/mo*, not including the $1000 iPhone it is put on. The average cable bill is $70/mo*. Millenias should ask Boomers how many times they went out to eat at restaurants - ANY restaurants - when they were growing up. That would be special occasions only.
If you turn off your cable, turn off your cell phone, and stop eating out & making meals at home from staple foods, and that is over $2,000 a year you are saving, and that should cover tuition at the local community college.
Boomers could afford college on shitty college job wages because on one side of the equation they weren't blowing $200/mo on entertainment, and on the other side, jobs hadn't been shipped to 3rd world contries or weren't filled by illegal immigrants from the same being paid less than a third under the table.
* IIRC
