True, lets avoid that one.

I would check prosperity relative to the years' prior to them having their revolutions.

Look at PPP growth by country before and after the communist revolutions and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Much of Eastern Europe has grown leaps and bounds since their revolutions.

Average GDP growth in Western Europe since the communist revolutions has grown by 70-100% in the past 18 years (1992-2010) for countries like France, the UK and Austria. Comparatively, in Eastern European countries - like the ones you mentioned, have grown  at rates of 200-300% in the same time period. For example, Estonia has grown from $5,700 USD in 1992 to $18,000 in 2010 - a 220% increase. Comparatively, France grew by just 72% in the same time period.

Are they as wealthy as Western Europe? Absolutely not. But its a much better situation than it was in 1980. Instead of Western European economies being 3 times the average PPP, its now around 2 times for most countries.

So yes, I checked my 'prosperity'. Eastern Europe has indeed flourished under capitalism and democratization. Just like many other countries have as well. Most of Europe is peaceful as well. No major worries of a nuclear holocaust.

Yeah, I remember when those countries used to call themselves "Baltic tigers", and I remember about "Ireland economic miracle" as well. It was fun while it lasted =) Where did it go? Growth was based almost entirely on IMF funding, which has boosted population spendings quite a bit (here's your PPP increase, check external debt per capita). The process was coupled with complete deindustrialization (I could name you a dozen of Soviet-era industrial enterprises ranging from car to electronics industry that are gone now, which at best were replaced with one milk farm). Now they aren't capable of supporting even basic pensions for god's sake. Estonians even managed to worsen situation by recently with fanfare entering eurozone and loosing control over their national currency (they could have devalued it at least). Good work! And standard scenario.

BTW check their prosperity from 1940 and on. You will be surprised.

And you should really quite talking like politician. Don't use these propagandistic and ideologistic slogans. Not trying to sound arrogant, just an advice.

IMF debt-ridden growth was and is an issue for Ireland, not the Eastern European countries (other Western countries in bold).

Here's the list of external debt, by country to prove my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

• United Kingdom: 416%
• Germany: 155%
• Lativa: 146%
• Estonia: 114%
• Bulgaria: 105%
• United States: 97%
• Romania: 56%
• Poland: 47%

So I'd say your argument about debt is quite invalid, given that other Western nations have as much or more than Eastern Europe, which should speak that their growth wasn't due to debt, but growth through free-market reforms.

Could you point to any sort of statistical data concerning Eastern European growth after 1940? There is very little info, as I don't think many Communist officials would like for that type of thing to get out. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear some actual data from you, as opposed to meaningless antecdotal arguments. So what if Eastern Europe has less manufacturing if they are replacing it with better paying service jobs?

Again, data shows your arguments as being mostly questionable, according to the UN's Human Development Index, which shows that Estonia and other Eastern European nations are ahead of the growth curve:

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/EST.html

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/LTU.html

And so on.

If Saudi Arabia goes all rebelous oil prices will skyrocket.

@mrstickball

% of GDP means dipshit, since GDP is not truthful indicator by itself (I beleive, it was discussed somewhere here and I, and other person as well, have stated my point on that matter). Naturally GDP of Baltic states has grown rapidly through last 20 years due endless crediting of demand, so debt expressed in % to GDP ain't that big, that's why I take it as per capita, not to mention that actual population of these territories is quite smaller than official (hard time finding job there, so yeah, it's so much better that now, in free market, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians can easily travel to Western Europe to literally clean somebody's toilet). Moreover compared to other economies such as Germany Baltic states as I've mentioned are completely deindustialized, they do not produce any actual product with significant added cost (they're economies of milk and sprats now), so every $ they owe is much harder burden than the same $ owed by Germans.

They're literally selling country to everyone who damn will to buy, they're selling ports to us, railways to Chinese, land to Swedes. The latter is a bit ironic, since Swedish banks who practically own a great deal of their debt are now the biggest landowner there, while population is converting to farm labourers fast. Quoting one of Latvian I used to know personally - we're back to those who owned us once (he obviously meant the fact that Swedes owned these territories prior to defeat in Norther War).

I won't bother bringing statistical data from Soviet textbooks to discussion at this late hour, which is mostly quoting reports on production increase of whatever in half cases irrelevant. Just be aware that you shouldn't comprehend economical growth in terms of often-used nowadays indicators such as GDP and it's derivatives. In administrative command system a great deal of value is hidden by distribution system, so you won't get like in US a great deal of GDP increase through rent of apartement or homes, since in USSR you get it for free and any renting is black market not present in official documents. I don't know why you need proof to anything so obvious, just compare situation before and after: car industry, carriage engineering, electronics, atomic energetics - those regions used to specialize on assembling and manufacturing product with significant added cost - so naturally a great deal of population not only was urbanized from literally land of small farms and peasants but significantly upped their well-being (in fact, on average higher than rest of USSR, which is well-know fact for everyone who lived in USSR, to extent it was 'prestige' to live there, now they're cloaca of Europe).

Speaking about Ireland just a while ago they had the highest debt per capita (it's important to note I mean external, not national).

P.S.: Really, I'm tired of writing damn novels, you don't even need to know details about these countries, just rough understanding how this frigging system, let's call it financial capitalism, works. So deindustrialization of Eastern Europe, which was done on purpose, as a main trend for last 20 years is easily understandable. Nobody cared before, but now when age of prosperity is over they will care. And I'm not buying rhetorics about postindstrial society bla-bla-blah and service jobs bla-bla-blah as backbone of economy (I wash your feet, you cut my hair, what we're going to eat tomorrow?) . EU leaders is feeding this propaganda to Eastern Europeans, but why should I support such bollocks? Very few things I'm certain about, but what I know for sure is that in it's present form and shape EU has no future.