Re: Congratulations
"Delightfully, the only place this has ever happened was in Soviet states and boy, was Marx right, labour got screwed big time."
Ah, no, it also happened in Nazi Germany (I'm re-reading Shirer at the moment). The Nazi State allocated workers to industry (and tied peasant farmers to the land) then set wages. Although the propaganda was that the German worker was better off under Hitler, the truth was that the reduction in unemployment was paid for by a bigger reduction in real wages. Not only were hourly rates reduced, but a series of new taxes were introduced, some of which went to the Labour Front - which absorbed some of the unemployed in its huge bureaucracy. The resulting inefficiency is partly demonstrated by the way that the Western allies outproduced Germany without slave labour, though cheap energy in the US played a part in this.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
