Standards of Living

In a long post about things like Socialism and Chernobyl, Den Beste mentions this joke that Poles used to tell each other:

A Pole met a Russian friend and an American friend at a bar for a drink, but arrived late. He apologized, saying he had been waiting in line to buy a ham.

The American said, "What’s a line?"

The Russian said, "What’s a ham?"

(The whole post is worth reading, of course.)