How Egg Prices Became the Symbol of Poland’s Successful Transition To Freedom
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was the dramatic event that marked the fall of European communism. The first sign that freedom was actually working in the former Soviet Bloc would prove to be a little more mundane: the falling price of Polish Eggs.
By the 1980s, Poland’s command economy was in deep crisis. Budget deficits and inflation were skyrocketing, as was state-owned heavy industry’s consumption of energy and raw materials. Meanwhile, output and exports were collapsing, and shortages of consumer goods were widespread.
In 1989, Leszek Balcerowicz, the finance minister of Poland’s newly elected Solidarity government, argued that the only way forward was a rapid, radical transition from socialism to a free market economy.
Beginning in January 1990, the government implemented his so-called Balcerowicz Plan to slash state subsidies to heavy industry and liberalize state controls on prices, currency exchanges, and foreign investment.
Critics of this “shock therapy” agenda argued such a rapid transition would devas
Article from Reason.com
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