Was in East Germany on a tour ,Was a serving soldier in W/Berlin in 1976, you were allowed in..think the exchange rate was 10-1in favor of deutchmark......the problem was....everybody had a job, but not everyone worked in the east + no real free market....obviously.
It is really amazing that the East Germans were able to solve all their criminal problems so they could devote all their resources to narrowing in on these two families.
You can buy the DVD either from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Sad, but fascinating time capsule from that part of Europe. (At least the movie does have a happy ending--don't want to give away too much. Rented it from my local video store back around 1990.)
In fact, farmers were paid more for their produce than for what they sold for in the supermarkets. Where as now farmers are paid little and the corporations bag all the profit
There was plenty in East German shops, especially in Berlin. Also many items were heavily subsidized by the state. In 40 years the price of bread/milk etc never went up! East germans only paid 5% of there pay salary on rent. Most East Germans had plenty of money. Only "luxury" goods were expensive!
@79luke Not according to a German friend of mine. Yeah, you could, for example, buy a car, but you had to wait years for approval to do so and then you could only buy whatever car the government said you could buy. According to her, the East German government did just enough to be able to say that they were doing something for their people and that's it.
Isn't that what it's all about? Price controls keep everything cheap, only problem is that when the profit margin is artificially suppressed by the state, nobody is willing to produce the goods that they cannot make a decent profit from.
