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We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s, basically, that is if you ignore the financial-industry-led growth of the UK (London, mostly) and the C

We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s, basically, that is if you ignore the financial-industry-led growth of the UK (London, mostly) and the Chinese-supported industrial revival of Germany starting with the mid-2000s. Japan has been a stagnant economy for 30 years now. All these political entities are free of despots (thankfully so). All I’m trying to say is that tying economic performance with the nature of the political regime might be very dangerous for the political regime, because what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth? Going back to Putin, I was trying to say that there is not only one person that is behind the recent events, a “despot”, apparently there’s an entire Russian administration apparatus that thinks the same (hence why I linked to that Wikipedia page).

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s False comparison. Russia’s real GDP per capita has fallen 30% in the last decade [1]. This is true in no EU member. > what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth? It typically fails. Particularly if every one of its neighbors is meanwhile delivering quality of life gains. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-d...
- somenameforme 5y ago
  You're starting at a local max as a baseline and then comparing after what happened from the sanctions of 2014 (after Crimea) paired with very low oil prices followed by the coronapocalypse when their economy was starting to kick back into gear. This [1] page shows the yearly drops more clearly. But I think most importantly is that as the US (and increasingly everywhere in the world) emphasizes, GDP/capita often is a poor measurement of how the people themselves are doing. Here [2] is a graph of the change in real wages [2]. That is better than most places in the EU and is continuing upward in spite of ever more sanctions. The big question is what impact the current wave of sanctions will have. And how that will jive with what may be persistently very high oil prices. [1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp [2] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> We’ve had slow growth in Western Europe since the 1980s False comparison. Russia’s real GDP per capita has fallen 30% in the last decade [1]. This is true in no EU member. > what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth? It typically fails. Particularly if every one of its neighbors is meanwhile delivering quality of life gains. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-d...

somenameforme 5y ago
You're starting at a local max as a baseline and then comparing after what happened from the sanctions of 2014 (after Crimea) paired with very low oil prices followed by the coronapocalypse when their economy was starting to kick back into gear. This [1] page shows the yearly drops more clearly. But I think most importantly is that as the US (and increasingly everywhere in the world) emphasizes, GDP/capita often is a poor measurement of how the people themselves are doing. Here [2] is a graph of the change in real wages [2]. That is better than most places in the EU and is continuing upward in spite of ever more sanctions. The big question is what impact the current wave of sanctions will have. And how that will jive with what may be persistently very high oil prices. [1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp [2] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wages