More on What's Driving Russia to Bankruptcy
Always responsive to readers, La Russophobe is happy to respond to a question from avid reader "Ugly Racoons" regarding the significance for the idea of Russian poverty that "more than 3 million cars are currently registered in Moscow, 12 times more than just 15 years ago, and Konstantin Korolevsky, a senior Moscow city official, said this week that the number of cars on Moscow roads was growing by 102,000 every year."
This is more proof, if any were needed, of the dire economic circumstances Russia faces.
Moscow is where all of Russia's wealth is concentrated; its residents are by far better off than in any other area of Russia, because the Kremlin sucks the blood of the nation to make it so, as all Russian people know. Yet, in this center of concentrated wealth, there are only 3 million automobiles for 11.2 million people, and the local government is totally unable to manage infrastructure issues even for that relatively small number, leading to massive traffic jams on a 24 hour basis, as previously documented by La Russophobe (in the post from which the Ugly's quote was drawn) even to the extent that a professional soccer team had to leave their cars and ride the subway in order to get to a match.
The United States as a nation has 0.481 automobiles per capita. France has 0.463. Germany has 0.511. Sweden has 0.436. Moscow, holding Russia's greatest concentration of wealth, has just 0.268 -- America as a nation has 60% more automobiles per person than Moscow as a city (Germany has nearly twice as many, even though it includes the impoverished former Soviet slave state of East Germany). America as a nation has roughly the same number of automobiles that Russia, as a nation, has people. The disparity that would result if you compared America's areas of concentrated wealth to Moscow, or Russia as a country to America as a country, would be even more vast.
And if Moscow actually did match the West in this area, the results would be disastrous. Russia has simply not proved capable of creating the necessary infrastructure to support that many automobiles, so there would be gridlock and massive highway fatalities. As La Russophobe has previously reported, Russian highways are horrifically lethal even with the small number of cars Russia already has, nearly matching rivaling America in total highway fatalities even though America has twice Russia's population and a vastly greater number of cars on the road.
It's also worth mentioning, as La Russophobe has previously reported, that Russia is barbarically sexist when it comes to driving, denying the roadways to female drivers just as it oppresses them in every other walk of life (though they have, of course, an equal opportunity to be killed as passengers or pedestrians).
So, thanks to Ugly Racoons for pointing out yet another fact emphasizing the extremity of Russian poverty and the gross mismanagement of the post-Yeltsin government in addressing the problems presented by it. The Kremlin goes on building nuclear weapons, funding universal conscription into the army and providing military aid to rogue nations like Iran and Venezuela, but it doesn't make Russia's highways safe or create an economy where ordinary Russians can afford cars (in fact, there's really no such thing as credit in Russia where ordinary people are concerned, Russia is simply too corrupt and poor to support it). Yet, the lemming-like Russian population goes on favoring the Kremlin with stratosopheric approval ratings for its pathetically bad work, and the cycle of failure is never broken.
Labels:
economics,
neo-soviet failure
7 comments:
UGLY: So, as I understand it, you're agreeing that your original point about the number of cars was just plain stupid, and now you want to talk about something else, right? Well, we'd continue the dialogue but now we have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you've forgotten our advice about drinking and posting?
UGLY:
Again, you really shouldn't drink and post. By now, I think even the communists have given up trying to argue that Russians "don't really want cars" so the fact that they don't have them doesn't matter. It's a psychotic statement unworthy of further comment.
But the issue of Ladas does clearly show how ridiculous the idea of "purchasing power parity" is. Under that construct, a Russian who buys a Lada gets the same value as an American who buys a Totota. Of course, that's nonsense.
The average salary of an American is $36,000 while the average salary of a Russian is $300. I have posted links to support these figures. I stand by them. Actually, the difference between $36,000 and $300 is more than a factor of 100, it is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY. But I was being conservative. Do you have data that either salary quote is wrong?
UGLY:
That distinction was clarified in the post long ago. You really ought to try to keep up. LR regrets the ambiguity.
Thanks for making MY day, by implying that the fact that American annual salaries are TWELVE TIMES larger than Russian is meaningless, when in fact it's the difference between a first and third world state. An American earns as much in a month as a Russian in a year. With that in mind, care to explain how well Russia is doing compared to its great enemy as Cold War II begins (at Russia's urging)?
Exactly your type of "thinking" led the USSR to collapse. Keep it up and you'll drag the neo-USSR right down with you. And have my thanks!
UGLY:
You are deeply confused and mendaciously dishonest.
First of all, it's perfectly normal to make mistakes. Major newspapers have corrections pages just to deal with them (well, Western ones do, Russian papers never admit their mistakes and don't even have letters to the editor pages). Just because one makes a mistake doesn't mean it is a lie. Lies don't get corrected, you dimwit.
Second, it is perfectly correct that the average American salary is 120 times larger than the average Russian salary. The difference SHOULD only be 12 times, if the American annual is being compared to the Russian monthly, but it's 120 times, showing that the American salary is vastly, almost immeasurably greater. That was the original point. But it was written in an ambiguous manner which could have been misread by a warped mind like yours, so the correction was made. And instead of complimenting LR for being committed to accuracy, you attack her. That's because you're the scum of the earth.
Third, your attempt to avoid the point, which is that an American earns in a MONTH what it takes a Russian a YEAR to earn, yet you Russia continues to provoke the US rather than accomodate it. That's suicide, plain and simple.
In fact, the REAL point was that the New York Times was grossly inaccurage in how it characterized Russian wealth. You IGNORE that inaccuracy, because it's pro-Russian, showing that your real committment to accuracy is non-existent and based purely on partisan extremism.
BTW: Are your smiley faces meant to make peole take you more seriously? If so, you're a classic Russian moron. If not, you really don't need any more reminders of how silly and vacuous you are, I assure you.
UGLY: I'm curious. This post originally contained an error that favored Russia, but you didn't mention it. It orginally overstated Moscow's ratio of cars to people as 0.333 because it understated Moscow's population as 10 million rather than its actual 11.2 million (actually, some estimates place it at 11.5 or even as high as 14 million, see http://www.travelpost.com/AS/Russia/Moscow_City/Moscow/1541044; http://www.stranslation.com/Russian_Translation/moscow.htm, so even the existing ratio could be too conservative). Yet you didn't notice this. Are you sloppy, or just blindly pro-Russian?
UGLY:
Once again, I'm proved right and you're proved wrong. Yawn. This is getting boring now. Impossible to take your calls for accuracy seriously when they are ALWAYS one sided. Just typical Russophile propaganda.
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