Most Russians have never lived as well as they do now. Nor do people believe that things are about to get worse. The fact that Russians are living better is evident from their outgoings. Spending at cafes and restaurants, for example, is increasing.
After the start of the war, inflation rocketed – but wages more than kept pace.
Demand for non-food goods (i.e. items where purchases can be postponed or even canceled) has recovered from its slump in the months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its rate of growth now exceeds both inflation, and wage increases.
This does not look like the sort of panic buying that happens in a crisis, when many rush out to buy whatever consumer durables they can afford. Instead, Russians appear to have sufficient confidence in their finances to take out personal loans. Consumer confidence is approaching record levels, Nabiullina told reporters on Friday.
Of course, increased prosperity is not universal. But those who have lost out are the more wealthy Russians. The average income of the richest 10% in Russian society has increased by 27% since the start of the war. While this may seem a lot, it’s the lowest rise of all 10 income groups, and barely matches the combined inflation rate for the past two years. Incomes for the poorest in society have grown much faster.
I have to know what groceries are like because Canadians are suffering
Oh wow. I think I might cry.
Really puts how much we’re getting screwed in Canada into perspective.
Vijay Prashad remains correct. I don’t want to stay here anymore 😫
Right there with you. 😭
Keep in mind, these are not good numbers. Official substiniance wage in Russia is around 13k rubles per month.
Average salary in my city is around 40-45k, skewed heavily by various overpaid fucks. Folks like store cashiers get only around half of that. And this is before rent.
So keep that in mind while lamenting how you’re getting screwed over in the Imperial core.
Yeah I feel like a lot of people miss that point. Wages are still low, especially outside major cities. Not to mention the unequal distribution. Also for instance the cost of living in Turkey is also lower than the West, but it doesn’t mean that the people living there can actually afford it. It only serves westerners who get to spend a cheap vacation there.
In my case, I make money via commissioned artwork, so my wages would be the same no matter where in world I am living. But over here I have to scramble to pay rent every month, but in another nation I would be much more secure doing the same thing and would be able to afford my basic needs much more easily. This is a pretty insensitive outlook though, which is why I deleted my other comment.
im not accusing lemmygrad members of this, im just very triggered by westerners travelling to non-imperial core countries, then coming back saying “wow everything is so cheap there :)” without actually considering the material conditions of the local population.
They’re killing us and trying to blame Russia for it 😭
Everyday is a battle of whether I should stay or go 😩
Yeah, if I could afford it I would absolutely move overseas. The way prices keep increasing, this time next year I literally won’t be able to afford groceries anymore, so I’m stockpiling canned food hoping that I can weather it a bit more easily. Canned goods haven’t increased in price too much (yet).
If you can move and maintain your quality of life or adjacent- IMO you absolutely should. There’s no reason whatsoever to think things will get better, rather the opposite- the economy’s fundamentals are all plummeting and worse news is on the horizon. IMO this country has a bright future as the next Argentina.
On background note, the GDP and the flawed financial measurement criteria by the Bretton Woods institutions do not measure cost of living because it will disprove the belief that Capitalism, which is a economic system that concentrates wealth to a few landowners contrary to the de jure Pax Americana redefinition, eliminates poverty. The Pax Americana creates the assumption that all countries and regions have minimal living expense requirement of $2 USD, and then use the high short-term financial growth under Capitalism to prove that Capitalism is eliminating poverty even when the temporary high financial growth masks decline in other dimensions that will lead to long-term financial regression.
Wow, I want to get sanctioned now
No you don’t lol. Russia was able to overcome this challenge due to a lot of factors like inherited soviet infrastructure and know-how, proximity to China, the scale of russia, etc…
You are. Your government put sanctions on its citizens
in order to spite Russia.
Slava Ukraini
Dear comrade, I’m regretfully informing you that just from this Wikipedia article we can tell this notion of “though terminating cliché” is complete garbage
No shit i’m trying to talk at their level.
I understand but better not feed them even more anti-communist talking points
If I posted anything else they’d be like myeeeh myeeh that’s a bad source myeeh and instead of making a little progress i’d make no progress.
Yeah probably
I’ve got a lot of experience with this 😩
This looks like it’s put out directly by the state. No evidence is presented.
Even so, it’s not really saying anything different than what you would expect to see. This isn’t outside of the realms of expectations, let alone reality.
Any liberal economy transitioning into a war time economy is going to see a fairly dramatic increase in economic production. You are centralizing and streamlining production capabilities, and you aren’t exactly having to wait for demand.
Any unemployed male is going to be drafted or put to work. Financial systems will be rearranged to better control interest rates. Legislation put in place to control market pricing, enabling them to better control run off inflation.
War is one of the only scenario that will galvanize enough political will for financial self interest to align themselves under the interest of the government. In the few times this has happened in modern history, the results are dramatic. The only real limitation of production becomes the amount of ink you have to print fiat currency.
The real bill only comes home to the table when you transition out of the war time economy, or if you start actually loosing the war to a significant degree.
Imo this is why France started really going agro the last few weeks. The best time to snuff out a combatant’s wartime economy is in the crib. If you let it fully establish itself the only real way to compete with it without going broke is to transition to a wartime economy yourself. Macron doesn’t want to buck the economic status quo, and Russia is forcing their hand.
There’s been plenty of discussion of Russian economy by western orgs like the IMF as well, and I don’t see anything contradictory here.
Bloomberg also put out more or less the same thing (https://archive.ph/fAYpB) a week ago if you want a “credible” Western mainstream source.
Another great reason to join BRICS. If Russia was able to improve this much even with sanctions, I can’t help to imagine what will happen to Cuba, Venezuela, and ton of countries that want to run far away from western hegemony.
For sure, I think that Global South countries should just start defaulting on their IMF debt, and moving towards BRICS.
