Comparisons, however made, turned out to be false because of lack of information. Soviet Union may have had tremendous output of steel, on paper, but nobody had a microwave till the 1990s. The word economy was something else there than what it meant in the West. In the West it relates, though quite imperfectly, to financial wellbeing of the citizenry. In the USSR it meant how many tanks could be built. No one, even in the 1980s owned a car in practical terms. Some had a car but only used it sparingly, like going to countryside on weekends if they could find and afford the gas.

Plus all the numbers coming from inside USSR were inflated or imagined. Steel output was verified by CIA probably through satellite imagery, which turned out to be wildly false because industrial plant efficiency was nowhere near the West's.