@maxdancona,
There are exceptions to every rule, however they involve relatively few people.
To the degree that socialism fulfills its promised to provide equal economic outcomes for people, the creativity and productiveness of the economy suffers, usually ending up in generalized poverty - rather poor wages for the loss of freedom involved.
Consider the vanished local industries and services in Venezuela. The result of the Bolivarian revolution was poverty and tyranny for all. Achieving this in a country as blessed with abundant natural resources, agricultural lands and timber forests is no small feat.
The samizdat jole in the declining Soviet Union was. "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us".