Quote of the day

Thanks to Eric via Brad Taylor for this one: The effects of socialism on East Germany.

With a view to corporate takeover, Volkswagen AG sent a Herr Heuss to Zwickau to find out how the Trabants (relatively cheap, East German cars) were made there. He emerged shocked from the huge plant, babbling "My God!" The Trabant operation was value-subtracting: valuable material, labor, and capital inputs went in at one end; shabby Trabies came out at the other, their bodies made from compacted trash. The final output was worth less than the sum of the inputs. What was not fully understood at the time was that East Germany's whole economy was value-subtracting and cost-unconscious.