Teribus, what's your datum point? When was that great experiment to liberate us via Communism?

Health and education systems in the west seldom approach the level of those in Cuba, where (for instance) infant mortality rates are dramatically lower than in Washington DC - this in the face of punitive sanctions by a big-bully neighbour. Where do you get your facts, ma big "free" pillock?

Yes, we live longer, for which there are various reasons, like the fact that we take grain from destitute countries and feed it to our cattle. Like screwing Africa in every way possible through obscene trade barriers while playing the Christian by giving them paltry handouts, often on condition that they buy our armaments, our ruinous engineering projects,etc. Any aid dependent country in Africa would happily forego such patronage in exchange for fair trade - and would be quids in.

The USSR - never the most efficient adminstration on earth - had a better welfare system than the US has now. The country did not see destitution on the scale it is experiencing now that it is trying to ape western capitalism and neither was it ravaged by the grotesque disparities between rich and poor that do so much to destabilise western society. (The nation that has the biggest disparity, good old America, also has the biggest proportion - by a wide margin - of its population in prison.)