[thrwway34]

Yep. You can have dirt-cheap housing (which won't be yours btw) and cheap transportation, but you will have to overpay for rest of the goods. And wait in extraordinary long queues.

You can experience some of the that life yourself - in North Korea or Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia for example.

[nsonha]

I'm from Vietnam and not old enough to have lived though the communist days but my first family house was the one my dad had gotten from his job. It was ours, he sold it after 10 years, maybe communism in Vietnam was not as strict as others.

I have definitely heard stories about food stamps and queuing for foods.